Not Famous Anymore

Elliott Adrian, a famous actor of questionable skill, drinks too much and works himself to the bottom in Hollywood and emerges from rehab wanting to put the American Dream into reverse: he embarks on a journey to not be famous anymore and works his way back to his hometown of tiny Argus, Illinois. After a short exile in Loreto, Mexico, Elliott s road trip takes him from Arizona to Arkansas and finally Argus, where he discovers the girl he was briefly married to in high school has a daughter he has never met. Along the way, Fox News offers a reward for anyone who can find Elliott and once in Argus he discovers he can t quite escape fame and must learn to straddle both worlds-- Hollywood as well as Argus. A story about the value of fame and also discovering true self.

Few writers understand their own niche as well as Michael Loyd Gray. A quintessentially Midwestern author, he dissects young men at the cusp of middle age, when fear of their own mortality first begins to assail them. Like Hemingway, his muse, Gray is and has always been a man s man. But, like Hemingway, he s smart enough to understand how much torrero dung lies packed beneath the boots of every dude. Dudes tell themselves stories to make the Bogeymen inside their souls lie still. And dude lit, which is what Gray writes, is about men newly aware of the passage of time who suddenly, wrenchingly, know that something drastic has to be done. In the case of Adrian Elliott, pampered film star of NOT FAMOUS ANYMORE, Gray tackles a man who s lived with lies in the City of Lies, Hollywood, facing away from his soul until one day, he simply can t take it anymore. This story is messy because dudes don t get clean and wise by buying shoes and having to choose between the sexy bad boy and the good man who s stood by her but was quiet and shy. Dudes don t introspect. Instead, they wander. Gray gets this to a tee by having Adrian get going, making his way back to the small town where it all began the good, the bad, and the ugly. Often, his characters end up wending their way home, because home is where you sort things out. This book explains better than any I ve read this decade how men think and act. And, guess what? Men are from Mars and Women from Venus, as another Grey told us to the tune of millions of copies. --Monique Raphael High

Michael Gray has fashioned a story about this American century's defining subject, celebrity, and married the subject to the lean, fast-paced style of the noir thriller.The result is a highly readable, totally engaging novel. --Stuart Dybek