Hollywood - Softcover

Bukowski, Charles

3.81

24,712 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0876857640 ISBN 13: 9780876857649

Publisher: Black Sparrow Pr, 1989

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Hank and his wife, Sarah, agree to write a screenplay, and encounter the strange world of the movie industry

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About the Author:

Charles Bukowski is one of America’s best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in 1920 in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother, and brought to the United States at the age of two. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for over fifty years. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp.

Review:

The movie-making machinations of the title town are exposed in this thinly veiled roman a clef about a hard-drinking poet-novelist tamed screenwriter. Presumably based on his experiences writing the movie, "Barfly," Bukowski lays open the absurdity and egotism of the film industry from the worm's-eye view of a screenwriter. Harry Chinanski has been asked by Jon Pinchot, a French director, to write a screenplay. Pinchot doesn't seem to care what the story is about. Neither does Chinanski; he's more concerned about where his next drink is coming from, and when. Sarah, his wife, is amenable to all this, matching her husband drink for drink and concerned only about getting home in time to feed their five cats. The couple takes a precarious journey through the land of corrupt backers and bizarre creative types where the writer "was where he belonged, in some dark corner, watching." This novel is funny, and it moves quickly. When Chinanski isn't being updated on the movie's progress, he's playing the ponies. Alcohol and its accoutrements have as large a part as any of the characters. Nestled between the progress reports are anecdotes from Chinanski's past which are now enacted in "The Dance of Jim Beam," in part by an actress who insists he write a scene that will showcase her legs. If nothing else, the experience spawned a novel. -- From Independent Publisher

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