Helpful Score: 2
Gore Vidal is one of my favorite authors. His rapier writing style can skewer pomposity. The "Roaring Twenties" comes alive in this book.
Helpful Score: 1
I'm a real Gore Vidal fan, so loved this book. Historical fiction at its finest.
back cover: The breathtaking, dramatic story of the birth of American motion pictures, by the nation's reigning master of the historical novel, Gore Vidal.
HOLLYWOOD
In his brilliant and dazzling new novel, Gore Vidal sweeps us into one of the most fascinaitng periods of American political and social change. The time is 1917. In Washington, President Wilson is about to lead the United States into the Great War. In California, a new industry is born that will transform America: moving pictures. Into this world of yellow journalists, shameless propagandists, and child stars comes Caroline Sanford, who is "discovered", given a new name --Emma Traxler--and vaulted into stardom in Hollywood. Now, just as Caroline must balance her two lives--West Coast star and East Cost newspaper publisher and senator's mistress--so too must America balance its two power centers: Washington, D.C. and "exotic, erotic, sinful" Hollywood. As war takes its toll, as power shifts in Washington, as the Harding administration finds itself embroiled in corruption, Hollywood is perfecting the art of image making. 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, from Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks to Franklin D. Roosevelt and the author's own grandfather, the blind Senator Gore. With HOLLYWOOD, Vidal once again proves himself a superb storyteller and a perceptive chronicler of human nature's endless deceptions.
"Wicked and provocative...Vidal's purview of Hollywood in one of its golden ages is fascinating." Tom Tryon Chicago Tribune
HOLLYWOOD
In his brilliant and dazzling new novel, Gore Vidal sweeps us into one of the most fascinaitng periods of American political and social change. The time is 1917. In Washington, President Wilson is about to lead the United States into the Great War. In California, a new industry is born that will transform America: moving pictures. Into this world of yellow journalists, shameless propagandists, and child stars comes Caroline Sanford, who is "discovered", given a new name --Emma Traxler--and vaulted into stardom in Hollywood. Now, just as Caroline must balance her two lives--West Coast star and East Cost newspaper publisher and senator's mistress--so too must America balance its two power centers: Washington, D.C. and "exotic, erotic, sinful" Hollywood. As war takes its toll, as power shifts in Washington, as the Harding administration finds itself embroiled in corruption, Hollywood is perfecting the art of image making. 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, from Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks to Franklin D. Roosevelt and the author's own grandfather, the blind Senator Gore. With HOLLYWOOD, Vidal once again proves himself a superb storyteller and a perceptive chronicler of human nature's endless deceptions.
"Wicked and provocative...Vidal's purview of Hollywood in one of its golden ages is fascinating." Tom Tryon Chicago Tribune
A novel of America in the 1920's.
