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Hollywood |
Author: Charles Bukowski
Published: 1989-01-01 |
List price: $16.00
Our price: $10.88
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As of: December 01st, 2008 03:41:22 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 great deal great book
The book was a amazing! It was my first Bukowski read. I will purchase from amazon again. shipping was quick and inexpensive.
 Entertaining but not his Best
I'm not sure exactly what to say about Hollywood. I certainly enjoyed it and always appreciate Bukowski at some level. In terms of his novels, I'd place this one behind Factotum, Post Office, and Women. Ham and Rye I have not yet read but will...unlike Pulp (whose subject matter does not appeal to me). I think that Hollywood's lack of edge--in comparison with his past achievements--reflects his newfound personal domesticity at the time it was penned. He was living with Linda (Sarah), and moving out of the low rent digs that formed the infrastructure of his life so it's a more sober work than the rest. Indeed, he was an older and more sober man in the eighties and conscious of his own mortality. The narrator mentions that Linda's presence gave him an extra 10 years and he may have been right about that. There's still some of the old joy in these pages though. Several scenes will make you smile and laugh aloud such as the name of his initial screenplay "The Dance of Jim Beam." The bottom line is that Bukowski is always worth the effort.
Good, but don't start here: Bukowski reflects on his brief stint in the film industry....
The act of writing is often a good way for people to consider and relfect on Life, on Ideas, or anything else. Hollywood comes shortly after Bukowski was involved in the making of a film -- barfly: he wrote the script.
Hollywood comes across as a writer trying to comes to terms and reach some sort of conclusion about his exerience in the movie industry.
Bukowski experiences both the good and the bad while he is involved with making the film. He meets fellow artists, gamblers, genius' to whom he feels sympathetic; while he also meets pre-madonnas, buisiness-minded suits. Part of the film business he genuinly seems to like.
The reader shares with Bukowski his enjoyment and pride in seeing something he wrote come alive as actors reinact memorable scenes from his past.
Ultimately, Bukowski decides that he will not write another movie script He is unwilling to compromise his art. And he is disgusted by the business mindedness of so many of the people who have the final say in what movies are going to be made.
One quirk I enjoyed about this book is that it is the first book in which Buk has achieved some success. Bukowski is determined not to let sucess and money change him as an artist. Only, he wonders if that is possible. He's now driving a black BMW instead of an old Jetta; and he has a jewish accountant.
Like any Bukoski novel, this isn't a bad read. The dialogue is a strength, and it's easy to see how Bukowski's dialoge and prose would translate well into film script.
If you haven't read Bukowski, I suggest you start elsewhere. Ham on Rye: A Novel would be a good place to start. Read The Post-Office Girl (New York Review Books Classics) and Women: A Novel I suggest reading before this also. The exception would be if you are less interested in Bukowski's literature and more interested into looking inside indipendent flim making. However, if you haven;t read Bukowski before, it is a sure thing that much of the humor and subtle remarks will not catch on with the reader.
 "The hours are long and must be filled somehow until our death"
So says Chinaski (pp. 202-03), Bukowski's alter-ego protagonist in Hollywood. In all honesty, the writing of Hollywood seems to have been one of those exercises to fill up empty and long hours. There's a difference between being prolific and good, and Bukowski's Hollywood--like his earlier novel Women--falls on the prolific side.
Autobiographical like all of Bukowski's novels except for his final one (Pulp), the book is the story of the writing of the script for the 1987 film "Barfly," running from the commission to write to the release of the movie. The narrative is filled with Hollywood types--producers, directors, actors, camera men, hangers-on--who Chinaski/Bukowski encounter along the way. Some of his sketches of them are genuinely witty and entertaining. Others--not so much. His depiction of Francois Racine, the fictional counterpart of Truffault--is way overdone, an increasingly tedious caricature of the tormented Gallic existentialist. Moreover, the character just disappears halfway through the novel, as if Bukowski either got tired of him or simply forgot about him.
In fact, the entire novel lacks cohesion--even more so than a typical Bukowski novel. Bukowski seems to come into his stride in the last 50 or so pages, which are genuinely solid. But the 200-page lead-up is embarrassingly bad. Admittedly, its fun to read Bukowski's savaging of Tinseltown, but one-liners do not a good novel make.
One theme in the novel--again, a characteristically Bukowskian theme--is Chinaski's/Bukowski's insistence that he only really feels alive when he's working at his "typer." He drinks so much, he tells the reader, because he can't otherwise face the tedium and "nothingness" of existence. Drink and frantic writing: two ways of filling up the hours. Fair enough. But not everything written to fill up the hours is necessarily worth reading. And the urge to fill each and every novel with nonstop drinking just wears thin after awhile.
 be warned
for some stupid reason this book is in Spanish & I assumed that since everything else on this page including the reviews that book would be as well
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