It's the 1920s, and an eccentric Hollywood megalomaniac (Damon Chance) is determined to create an epic "great American film" about the American wild west. To this end, he hires Harry Vincent, a down-on-his-luck scenarist (the guy who writes the cards for silent movies), to interview Shorty McAdoo, a genuine wild west relic, to extract an "authentic" recounting of how Americans tamed the west.The first thing that hits you is the quality of Vanderhaege's writing. It's lyric and original and swollen with authentic period detail - he doesn't just describe the Canadian/US frontier in detail: he challenges his readers to smell it, taste it, touch it, feel it, employing language that's stunning in its lack of anachronism.The next thing you notice is Chance's objective isn't as straightforward as it first appears. Your first clue (assuming we overlook the fact that the guy's name is, literally, "Chance") is that this eccentric studio boss venerates D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" - a horrific example of self-aggrandizing mythmaking if there ever was one. Over the course of the novel, you come to realize that Chance isn't looking for authenticity - he's looking to galvanize American ruthlessness by propagating the message that America is besieged ("Besieged" being the literal name of the movie he is making) by enemies, especially Europe's revolutionaries and the Jews, who deserve to be destroyed. "The enemy is never human," he tells our scenarist, creating a confounding ethical dilemma for poor Vincent who is coming to realize, through his interactions with McAdoo and a comely Jewish colleague (Rachel) that in the real world - unlike black & white "shorties" he writes for - good and evil are, at best, ambiguous concepts.This is a provocative novel of ideas cleverly embedded in a ripping yarn that embraces both the birth of Hollywood and the birth of our frontier, conveyed in vivid, affecting prose. Feel free to enjoy this for the terrific action/characters/ambiance, but for those who enjoy digging deeper, this novel offers ample opportunity to "invite argument, invite reconsideration, invite thought" - as Chance notes in one of his epic philosophical streams-of-consciousness. Is America's spiritual identity/native art form "motion," as Chance suggests? Should the goal of history-telling be to preserve the past (as Vincent supposes) or to secure the future (as Chance advocates)? Is empathy for the proletariat a strength (as Vincent believes) or a weakness (as Chance argues)? Is using movies to facilitate cultural assimilation appropriate - or dangerous propagandizing? So much great fodder here for book group discussion!
This is the most satisfying thing I’ve read in a long time. It’s simultaneously funny and heartbreaking, authentic and quixotic, intelligent, absorbing, and masterfully written.Ostensibly the story is about Maria, a plucky Italian emigree who, as WW2 erupts across Europe, flees Fascist Italy and a haunting, horrible mistake to make a new life in America as the assistant to the head of Mercury Studios, a struggling Hollywood filmmaking company. In truth, however, this book is no more about Maria than it is about the constellation of splendidly realized “bit players” who orbit her: eccentric movie studio bosses and washed up actors, wisecracking emigrees and meddling Italian relatives, beleaguered bureaucrats and ambitious blond secretaries, sentimental prostitutes, mourning mothers, doomed idealists, and racketeers with hearts of gold - characters whose stories, in Marra’s deft hands, are fully as complex and riveting and emotional as the central narrative that binds them together.If you’re looking for something that will keep your book club talking late into the night, this novel provides plentiful fodder for discussion: the ways in which both Hollywood and the novel’s large cast of emigrees reinvent reality from discarded scraps of the past; the Faustian bargains that so many characters are forced to make in order to protect themselves, their values, or the people they love; the abundant ironies and idiocies of war; the difficulties of making peace with injustice and fate and our own mistakes. Marra’s writing may be empathetic, but it’s also penetrating and perspicuous.If you’re fascinated by authentic historical detail about Hollywood in its infancy, if you enjoy your heartbreak with a side of incisive humor, if you admire characters who endure hardship with resiliency, grace, and decency, then you're in for a treat. My only regret is that I’ll now have to wait a while before being able to justify re-reading this; but at least that gives me time to explore some of Marra’s other novels in the meantime.
Make no mistake: this is an impressive work of research. However, there’s little source material for Schiff to work from (almost all of it the work of enemies or published decades after the events unfolded), and the author is cautious to remain within the confines of the evidence when drawing inferences about Cleopatra’s attributes or motives – all of which makes for an excellent work of scholarship, but not necessarily a riveting read.Not saying I didn’t learn a lot of interesting information about Egypt under the rule of the Ptolemaic kings and Roman politics during the Caesar/Mark Antony/Octavian era – especially given that my only background knowledge was Shakespeare's Antony & Cleopatra. Parts of this I found genuinely compelling: the stark contrast between the rights of Egyptian women vs. Roman women (attributable to the fact that the Egyptian pantheon was headed by a female – Isis – rather than a male?), the elaborate civil service put in place by the Ptolemaic kings, the somewhat scary parallels between the events that led to the fall of Rome and events happening in the world now.But am disappointed that, after 300+ pages, I don’t feel like I know much more about Cleopatra then when I began. Was she ever genuinely in love with Caesar and/or Antony, or were these relationships merely political gamesmanship by a shrewd and calculating politician? Was the prosperity experienced by Egypt during her reign due to her masterful leadership, or merely luck? Did she care about preserving Egypt, or were her decisions primarily intended to secure her own safety and pleasure? A less ethical “historian” might have provided answers, thereby crafting a less authoritative text, but perhaps also a more interesting read.Definitely not downplaying Schiff’s accomplishment here: this is a masterful biography. Just trying to make sure potential readers know what they are getting: lots of interesting history, plenty of juicy political scheming, but not a lot of new insight into the titular queen as a daughter, a woman, a lover, or a ruler.
