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]
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]
| Author | Title | Year |
|---|---|---|
| James Robert Baker | Boy Wonder | 1988 |
| Steve Erickson | Zeroville | 2007 |
| Michael Friedman | Martian Dawn | 2006 |
| Michael Grothaus | Epiphany Jones | 2016 |
| Rupert Hughes | City of Angels | 1941 |
| Geoff Nicholson | The Hollywood Dodo | 2004 |
| Terry Southern | Blue Movie | 1970 |
| Michael Tolkin | The Player | 1988 |
| Gore Vidal | Myra Breckinridge | 1968 |
| Gore Vidal | Myron | 1974 |
| Bruce Wagner | Force Majeure | 1991 |
| Bruce Wagner | I'll Let You Go | 2002 |
| Bruce Wagner | Still Holding | 2003 |
| Evelyn Waugh | The Loved One | 1948 |
| P. G. Wodehouse | Laughing Gas | 1936 |
| Charles Yu | Interior Chinatown | 2020 |