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Bezig met laden... Rebellie in Hollywood (1955)door Norman Mailer
Books Read in 2019 (577) Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. "I went to Palm Springs, and I didn't much care for it." You could, I guess, say that that's "The Deer Park" in a nutshell, but there's more to this book than mere moral censoriousness or lurid exposé. I haven't read much Mailer -- this is just the second book by him that I've ever read -- but the writing here is fantastic: crisp, forceful, masculine, and flowing. Reading it's like watching a really good pianist going after something stern and atonal with marvelously controlled intensity. Mailer's basic tool here is satire, and some film fans will, I suppose, have some fun trying to match the book's characters to their real-life analogues. Beyond that, though, I liked "The Deer Park" because there's so much about people that Mailer seems to get right in it: it offers an exquisitely informed description of the egoism of actors, the self-defeating egotism of many who who try to create art, perhaps most frighteningly, the weird mix of sentimentality and greed that motivates so many of the truly powerful. There's also pimp, self-made philosopher, and dead-eyed madnman Marion Faye, a portrait of a thoroughly destructive personality that's enormously chilling and, in its way, far ahead of its time. There is a lot of sex, indulgence, and general moral decay here: the novel's air of plush, seedy degeneracy is one of its attractions. You can see why a publisher of that time might have rejected it as obscene. But much of sexual content manages to be both bracingly frank enormously arousing, and I tend to think that writing about sex without seeming prurient or too self-serious is harder than it sounds. But the book is also an invigorating mix of literary and the unabashedly pulpy, beating writers like James Elroy and Robert Stone to this combination by at least twenty years. There's a recurrent religious analogy here that I think Mailer might take too far, and it is, I think, the only moment in which the book slips a little. Also, I found that the book, for all the scandal it contains, perhaps a bit too long and a bit too slowly paced, though that may simply be a reflection of its louche desert setting. I don't think that "The Deer Park" is one of Mailer's better-regarded books, but perhaps it's due for a revival. Few pieces of real-deal literature I've ever read sizzle so tantalizingly while going so deep. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Onderdeel van de uitgeversreeks(en)Non Stop-Bücherei (51/52) Heeft de bewerkingOnderscheidingen
"Amid the cactus wilds some two hundred miles from Hollywood lies a privileged oasis called Desert D'Or. It is a place for starlets, directors, studio execs, and the well-groomed lowlifes who cater to them. And, as imagined by Norman Mailer in this blistering classic, Desert D'Or is a moral proving ground, where men and women discover what they really want--and how far they are willing to go to get it. As Mailer traces their couplings and uncouplings, their uneasy flirtation with success and self-extinction, he creates a legendary portrait of America's machinery of desire." Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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A roman à clef, the metaphorical "Deer Park" is Desert D'Or, California (a fictionalized Palm Springs). A fashionable desert resort, Hollywood's elite converge there for fun and games and relaxation. The novel's protagonist, Sergius O'Shaughnessy (a recently discharged Air Force officer), is a would-be novelist who experiences the moral depravity of the Hollywood community first hand.