Hollywood: A Novel

by Gore Vidal Narrated by Grover Gardner

Overview

It is 1917, and President Woodrow Wilson is about to lead the country into the Great War in Europe. In California, a new industry is born that will irreversibly transform America. Caroline Sanford, the alluring heroine of Empire, discovers the power of moving pictures to manipulate reality as she vaults to screen stardom under the name of Emma Traxler. Just as Caroline must balance her two lives-West Coast movie star and East Coast newspaper publisher and senator's mistress-so too must America balance its two power centers: Hollywood and Washington. Here is history as only Gore Vidal can re-create it: brimming with intrigue and scandal, peopled by the greats of the silver screen and American politics.

“Hollywood shimmers with the illusion of politics and the politics of illusion.” - Chicago Sun-Times

“A wonderfully literate and consistently impressive work of fiction that clearly belongs on a shelf with Vidal's best.” - The New York Times Book Review

Editorial Reviews

New York Times

Vidal succeeds in making his history alive and plausible.

Richard Poirier

Vidal's originality derives from his as- surance that he can create and command the American history of his novels, as much as he can their imaginary components. No other American writer I know of has Vidal's sense of national proprietorship. He summons the entire American scene into his confident voice. Vidal's presump- tions work marvelously well for his intentions.—The New York Review of Books

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In the sixth of Vidal's historic novels about Aaron Burr and his descendants, the author has come a long way from Burr , the first in the series, both in time span--the focus here is on the years between 1917 and 1924--and quality. His imagination seems to flag as he draws closer to the present, and he delivers a surprisingly dry recitation of the facts and circumstances of history. Each of the novels in Vidal's U.S. saga has become more extravagantly peopled with historical personages. Presidents Harding, Wilson and Coolidge, and Hollywood stars Fairbanks, Chaplin and Mabel Norman make major appearances here. His fictional protagonists--Caroline Sanford and Burden Day, also the main characters of Empire --seem on hand merely to be injected at just the right moment to catch an intimate glimpse of the rich and famous. There is no dramatic tension in Hollywood , although there are regular flashes of Vidal's wit, in particular a scene in a steambath with Fairbanks and Chaplin waxing grandiloquent on the nature of movies. The details of the Teapot Dome scandal, the shadow presidency of Mrs. Wilson during her husband's incapacitation, and the difficulty of dealing with Harding's mistress are recounted with none of Vidal's usual relish. Although his writing continues to be clear and elegant, in Hollywood , he has failed to produce a compelling story. First serial to Washingtonian; BOMC featured alternate. (Feb.)

Library Journal

Prolific essayist, novelist (Burr et al.), screenwriter (Suddenly, Last Summer), playwright (The Best Man), and sometime political candidate Vidal quotes the definition of palimpsest as " `a parchment which has been written upon twice; the original having been rubbed out.' " This particular memoir of his first 39 years (1926-65), says Vidal, has "many rubbings-out and puttings-in," which may explain its many-layered nature and the bare nod to chronology, with flashbacks and flashforwards and curious juxtapositions of friend and foe. In it he blithely skewers both family and friends (or ex-friends)-particularly his alcoholic mother, the Auchinclosses, John and Jackie Kennedy, Anas Nin and other literati, and too many more to recount-with nasty revelations. But Vidal is still a stylish writer, and those not put off by the mean-spiritedness of these self-serving memoirs and fascinated by the literary, political, and entertainment worlds of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s may want to read this. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/95; BOMC and Quality Paperback selections; New Yorker serial, Oct. 2.]-Francine Fialkoff, "Library Journal"

From the Publisher

"        Wicked and provocative. . . . Vidal's purview of Hollywood in one of its golden ages is fascinating."
--Tom Tryon

"        Vidal succeeds in making his history alive and plausible."
--The New York Times


"        Vidal's originality derives from his as-
surance that he can create and command the American history of his novels, as much as he can their imaginary components. No other American writer I know of has Vidal's sense of national proprietorship. He summons the entire American scene into his confident voice. Vidal's presump-
tions work marvelously well for his intentions."
--Richard Poirier,
The New York Review of Books


Also available from the Modern Library:
Burr  ¸  Lincoln  ¸  1876  ¸
Empire  ¸  Washington, D.C.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940177619309
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	11/12/2019
Series:	Narratives of Empire , #5
Edition description:	Unabridged

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