The Late Great Creature: A Novel - Softcover

Brower, Brock

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1590206886 ISBN 13: 9781590206881

Publisher: The Overlook Press, 2011

Synopsis

Simon Moro, a 68-year-old star, is making his last picture, a low-budget remake of Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven. Moro, infuriated by the bland horror movies of his day, sees his own career--even as it ends-- as an ongoing effort to wallop the public with an overwhelming moral shock. And he succeeds when an elaborate publicity stunt turns into a gruesome and grand personal statement. As Moro's life reels toward its macabre end, it also reels backward through lies and evasions to show its surprising beginning. Underneath his Frankensteinian exaggeration, Moro has a vivid and humane story to tell, even as the coffins break open and dark, erotic secrets are revealed. Brock Brower has taken the horror film in all its gory glory to create a book that recycles pop material into literature, creating a Dickensian tale of America.

About this title

About the Author

Brock Brower has written for Esquire, The New York Times, and Harper's, among others, and has received an O. Henry Award for his short fiction. Brower lives in Carpinteria, California.

Review

"It's a wonderful book . . . like a circus with several brilliant performances going on at the same time . . . a real breaking through. I don't think anybody ever again will be able to dabble politely in mixing 'real life' and fiction." — Joan Didion

"A lost classic is rediscovered, repackaged, and preserved as a feast for a new generation of readers. The Late Great Creature is the history of a horror-film star and a treatise on human frailty and the innate human urge to seek the sublime through the grotesque. Brock Brower created a brilliantly observed and wholly synchronous work of art 40 years ago; now it is back to be savored and marveled at anew." — James Ellroy

"The way the book skewers society's obsession with celebrity culture is even more valid today than when it was written, proving that great art stands the test of time...best-selling author James Ellroy called the novel, 'A lost classic to be rediscovered, repackaged, and preserved as a feast for a new generation. Brock Brower created a brilliantly observed and wholly synchronous work of art 40 years ago; now it is back to be savored and marveled at anew.' Amen." — Forbes

"First published 40 years ago, Brower's fervent novel, a 'study' of fictional horror movie icon Simon Moro, comes off just as perplexing, thorny, and periodically miraculous today as it must have in 1971 . . . Brower funnels low culture into high literature with devil-may-care abandon . . . it's a fierce disappointment the films aren't real." — Booklist

"A cult novel that amounts to a loving satiric tribute to cinema schlockmeister Roger Corman . . . the story winds back on itself to earlier times in a manner that 'suggests a younger Nabokov who has been nurtured on a diet of creepy old movies." — New York Post

"The Late Great Creature remains a warped mirror lovingly polished with dark lyricism. Brower's novel may now have a chance to become part of all our bad dreams. The good part." — Huffington Post

"Brower has a gift for calibrating the proportions of horror, humor, historic detail, and pop surrealism in a way that makes this unlikely potion work. The novel's dazzling verbal surface bursts with shocking moments of significant action." — Santa Barbara Independent

About this edition

• Publisher: The Overlook Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1590206886
• ISBN 13: 9781590206881
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256