Hollywood
by Charles Bukowski
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Book Summary Information
Author: Charles BukowskiEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1989-01-01
ISBN: 0876857632
Number of pages: 248
Publisher: Ecco
Book Reviews of Hollywood
Book Review: "The hours are long and must be filled somehow until our death"
Summary: 2 Stars
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.
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