List of Hollywood novels

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This is a list of Hollywood novels i.e., notable fiction about the American film and television industry and associated culture. The Hollywood novel is not to be confused with the Los Angeles novel, which is a novel set in Los Angeles and environs but not overtly about the movie business and its effect on the lives of industry participants and moviegoers. For instance, the works of Paul Beatty, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash , and Aldous Huxley's Ape and Essence are Los Angeles novels but not Hollywood novels; The Oxford Companion to English Literature deems Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust a standard example of the Hollywood novel. [1]

Contents

The Hollywood novel genre dates to 1916 and is the "only American regional genre determined by a specific industry." [2] Hollywood novels portray the entertainment industry as "glitzy, powerful, and often sleazy." [3] According to the New York Society Library, "Yes, there is a part of Los Angeles called Hollywood, but the Hollywood of our imagination is so much more. It is the locus of the motion picture industry. Home to stars and producers and writers. A glamorous place. A place that is quintessentially American—where strivers and connivers can reinvent themselves and where there is always the possibility of being discovered. For better or worse, it has helped to define our country to ourselves and to the world. It is easy to see why writers have taken it up as a subject so frequently." [4]

According to author Michael Friedman in Publishers Weekly , "My informal taxonomy revealed that, as far as subject is concerned, Hollywood novels tend to fall into the following loose categories: moguls (Fitzgerald), divas (McCourt, Vidal), train wrecks (Stone, Didion), ingénues en route to stardom (Lambert), foolish dreams of being discovered (West, McCoy), and Brits who have had enough of our philistine ways and ersatz culture and return home to civilization (Waugh, Wodehouse)." [5]

AuthorTitleYear
Katherine Albert Remember Valerie March1939
Clive Barker Coldheart Canyon 2001
Cal R. Barnes True Grandeur 2017
William Boyd The New Confessions 1987
Ray Bradbury A Graveyard for Lunatics 1990
Christopher Bram Father of Frankenstein1996
Gwen Bristow Tomorrow Is Forever 1943
Brock Brower The Late Great Creature1971
Charles Bukowski Hollywood 1989
Edgar Rice Burroughs The Girl from Hollywood 1922
James M. Cain Serenade1937
Don Carpenter A Couple of Comedians1979
Don Carpenter The True Life Story of Jody McKeegan1975
Don Carpenter Turnaround1981
Robert Carson Love Affair1958
Raymond Chandler The Little Sister 1949
Jackie Collins Hollywood Wives 1983
Ray Connolly Shadows on a Wall1995
Robert Crais Lullaby Town 1992
Charles Dennis The Dealmakers1981
Joan Didion Play It as It Lays 1970
John Gregory Dunne True Confessions1977
James Ellroy The Big Nowhere 1988
James Ellroy The Black Dahlia 1987
James Ellroy L.A. Confidential 1990
James Ellroy White Jazz 1992
Henry Farrell What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 1960
Peter Farrelly The Comedy Writer 1998
Carrie Fisher Postcards From the Edge 1987
Steve Fisher I Wake Up Screaming1941
F. Scott Fitzgerald The Last Tycoon 1941
F. Scott Fitzgerald The Pat Hobby Stories 1962
Paula Fox The Western Coast1972
Daniel Fuchs The Golden West 1989
C.W. Gortner Marlene2016
Richard Grenier The Marrakesh One-Two1983
Doris Grumbach The Missing Person1981
Richard Hallas (Eric Knight) You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up1938
MacDonald Harris Screenplay1982
Alfred Hayes My Face for the World to See1958
Tom E. Huff Marabelle1980
Aldous Huxley After Many a Summer 1939
Clive James The Silver Castle1996
Jay Richard Kennedy Prince Bart1952
Amanda Lee Koe Delayed Rays of a Star2019
Michael Korda Queenie1985
Gavin Lambert The Goodbye People1971
Gavin Lambert Inside Daisy Clover 1963
Gavin Lambert Running Time1982
Gavin Lambert The Slide Area1959
Janet Leigh The Dream Factory2002
Janet Leigh House of Destiny1995
Elmore Leonard Get Shorty 1990
Anita Loos A Mouse Is Born 1951
Anita Loos No Mother to Guide Her 1961
Norman Mailer The Deer Park 1955
Alan Marcus Of Streets and Stars1960
Armistead Maupin Maybe the Moon 1992
James McCourt Kaye Warfaring in "Avenged"1985
Horace McCoy I Should Have Stayed Home1938
Horace McCoy They Shoot Horses, Don't They? 1935
Larry McMurtry Somebody's Darling1978
Jennifer Niven Hollywood Blonde2014
Joyce Carol Oates Blonde 2000
Darcy O'Brien A Way of Life, Like Any Other1977
John O'Hara Hope of Heaven1938
John O'Hara The Big Laugh1962
Stewart O'Nan West of Sunset2015
James Patterson Mary, Mary 2006
Tim Powers Medusa's Web2016
Taylor Jenkins Reid The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo 2017
Harold Robbins The Carpetbaggers 1961
Harold Robbins The Dream Merchants 1949
Theodore Roszak Flicker 1991
Thomas Sanchez The Zoot Suit Murders1978
Budd Schulberg The Disenchanted 1950
Budd Schulberg What Makes Sammy Run? 1941
Pat Silver-Lasky Ride The Tiger2010
Amy Sohn The Actress2014
Martha Southgate Third Girl from the Left2006
Matthew Specktor American Dream Machine2014
C.K. Stead Sister Hollywood1989
Robert Stone Children of Light 1986
Jacqueline Susann Valley of the Dolls 1966
Adriana Trigiani All the Stars in the Heavens2016
Gore Vidal Hollywood 1990
Peter Viertel White Hunter Black Heart 1953
Bruce Wagner Dead Stars2012
Bruce Wagner I'm Losing You 1996
Nathanael West The Day of the Locust 1939
Harry Leon Wilson Merton of the Movies 1922
Gary K. Wolf Who Censored Roger Rabbit? 1981

Novels set in satires of Hollywood

AuthorTitleYear
James Robert Baker Boy Wonder1988
Steve Erickson Zeroville 2007
Michael Friedman Martian Dawn2006
Michael Grothaus Epiphany Jones 2016
Rupert Hughes City of Angels1941
Geoff Nicholson The Hollywood Dodo2004
Terry Southern Blue Movie 1970
Michael Tolkin The Player1988
Gore Vidal Myra Breckinridge 1968
Gore Vidal Myron 1974
Bruce Wagner Force Majeure1991
Bruce Wagner I'll Let You Go2002
Bruce Wagner Still Holding2003
Evelyn Waugh The Loved One 1948
P.G. Wodehouse Laughing Gas 1936
Charles Yu Interior Chinatown 2020

See also

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References

  1. Birch, Dinah, ed. (2009). "Hollywood novel". The Oxford Companion to English Literature (7th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-280687-1.
  2. Brooker-Bowers, Nancy (1983). The Hollywood Novel: An American Literary Genre (PDF) (Thesis). Drake University.
  3. Canfield, David; Rankin, Seija Rankin (November 7, 2022). "The most irresistible Hollywood novels". EW.com. Retrieved 2023-07-27.
  4. "Hollywood Novels". New York Society Library. Retrieved 2023-07-27.
  5. Friedman, Michael (June 5, 2015). "10 Best Hollywood Novels". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved 2023-07-27.

Further reading