Author | Bill Maher |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Publisher | Random House. Simon & Schuster |
Publication date | 1994 |
Media type | |
Pages | 302 [1] |
ISBN | 0-7432-4251-3 |
Followed by | When You Ride Alone You Ride with bin Laden |
True Story: A Novel is a book by Bill Maher. It was Maher's first book, and his only novel. It was first published in 1994 [2] by Random House and was published in 2000 by Simon & Schuster. The book is an episodic novel detailing the true accounts of Maher and other stand-up comics in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Maher began writing True Story while he was working in comedy clubs, shortly after graduating from Cornell University with a degree in English. [3]
I did have a deep desire to write one novel. I always believed from my English studies that most novelists wrote one great novel and then pretty much wrote the same one over and over. So I thought I'd just write one.
— Bill Maher
Richard Bernstein from The New York Times gave a mixed to favourable review, stating "when True Story works, it works because of Mr. Maher's energetic intelligence and his creation of characters whose prolonged sophomorism has distinct qualities", [1] as did Raw Sawhill from The New York Times, who stated that whilst the first half of the book seemed like "an underdramatized blur", Maher "comes through with a handful of well-conceived scenes" in its second half. [2]
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels. Described as the "King of Horror", a play on his surname and a reference to his high standing in pop culture, his books have sold more than 350 million copies, and many have been adapted into films, television series, miniseries, and comic books. King has published 64 novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, and five non-fiction books. He has also written approximately 200 short stories, most of which have been published in book collections.
William Goldman was an American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. He first came to prominence in the 1950s as a novelist before turning to screenwriting. He won Academy Awards for his screenplays Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and All the President's Men (1976).
In Cold Blood is a non-fiction novel by American author Truman Capote, first published in 1966. It details the 1959 murders of four members of the Clutter family in the small farming community of Holcomb, Kansas.
A humorist (American) or humourist is an intellectual who uses humor, or wit, in writing or public speaking, but is not an artist who seeks only to elicit laughs. Humorists are distinct from comedians, who are show business entertainers whose business is to make an audience laugh. It is possible to play both roles in the course of a career.
Nora Ephron was an American journalist, writer, and filmmaker. She is best known for her romantic comedy films and was nominated three times for both the Writer’s Guild of America Award and the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Silkwood (1983), When Harry Met Sally... (1989), and Sleepless in Seattle (1993). She won the BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay for When Harry Met Sally..., which the Writers Guild of America ranked as the 40th greatest screenplay of all time.
Robert Upshur Woodward is an American investigative journalist. He started working for The Washington Post as a reporter in 1971 and currently holds the title of associate editor.
William Maher is an American comedian, actor, political commentator, and television host. He is known for the HBO political talk show Real Time with Bill Maher (2003–present) and the similar late-night show called Politically Incorrect (1993–2002), originally on Comedy Central and later on ABC.
Thomas Eugene Robbins is a best-selling and prolific American novelist. His most notable works are "seriocomedies", such as Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Tom Robbins has lived in La Conner, Washington since 1970, where he has written nine best-selling books. His latest work, published in 2014, is Tibetan Peach Pie, which is a self-declared "un-memoir". Even Cowgirls Get The Blues has been adapted into a movie that shares the same name by Gus Van Sant in 1993.
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was a German-born British and American Booker Prize-winning novelist, short story writer and two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter. She is perhaps best known for her long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, made up of director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant.
Mormon fiction is generally fiction by or about members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who are also referred to as Latter-day Saints or Mormons. Its history is commonly divided into four sections as first organized by Eugene England: foundations, home literature, the "lost" generation, and faithful realism. During the first fifty years of the church's existence, 1830–1880, fiction was not popular, though Parley P. Pratt wrote a fictional Dialogue between Joseph Smith and the Devil. With the emergence of the novel and short stories as popular reading material, Orson F. Whitney called on fellow members to write inspirational stories. During this "home literature" movement, church-published magazines published many didactic stories and Nephi Anderson wrote the novel Added Upon. The generation of writers after the home literature movement produced fiction that was recognized nationally but was seen as rebelling against home literature's outward moralization. Vardis Fisher's Children of God and Maurine Whipple's The Giant Joshua were prominent novels from this time period. In the 1970s and 1980s, authors started writing realistic fiction as faithful members of the LDS Church. Acclaimed examples include Levi S. Peterson's The Backslider and Linda Sillitoe's Sideways to the Sun. Home literature experienced a resurgence in popularity in the 1980s and 1990s when church-owned Deseret Book started to publish more fiction, including Gerald Lund's historical fiction series The Work and the Glory and Jack Weyland's novels.
Anthony John Horowitz, is an English novelist and screenwriter specialising in mystery and suspense.
A novelization is a derivative novel that adapts the story of a work created for another medium, such as a film, TV series, stage play, comic book or video game. Film novelizations were particularly popular before the advent of home video, but continue to find commercial success as part of marketing campaigns for major films. They are often written by accomplished writers based on an early draft of the film's script and on a tight deadline.
Donald Edwin Westlake was an American writer, with more than a hundred novels and non-fiction books to his credit. He specialized in crime fiction, especially comic capers, with an occasional foray into science fiction and other genres. Westlake is perhaps best-remembered for creating two professional criminal characters who each starred in a long-running series: the relentless, hardboiled Parker, and John Dortmunder, who featured in a more humorous series.
Denis Hale Johnson was an American writer best known for his short story collection Jesus' Son (1992) and his novel Tree of Smoke (2007), which won the National Book Award for Fiction. He also wrote plays, poetry, journalism, and non-fiction.
Jonathan Frederick Lawton is an American screenwriter, producer, and director. His screen credits include the box office hit Pretty Woman, Mistress, Blankman, Under Siege, Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, The Hunted, Chain Reaction, DOA: Dead or Alive, Jackson, and the TV series V.I.P. Under the assumed name J.D. Athens, he wrote and directed Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death and Pizza Man.
Mark Lewisohn is an English historian and biographer. Since the 1980s, he has written many reference books about the Beatles and has worked for EMI, MPL Communications and Apple Corps. He has been referred to as the world's leading authority on the band due to his meticulous research and integrity. His works include The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions (1988), a history of the group's session dates, and The Beatles: All These Years (2013–present), a three-volume series intended as the group's most comprehensive biography.
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The non-fiction novel is a literary genre which, broadly speaking, depicts real historical figures and actual events woven together with fictitious conversations and uses the storytelling techniques of fiction. The non-fiction novel is an otherwise loosely defined and flexible genre. The genre is sometimes referred to using the slang term "faction", a portmanteau of the words fact and fiction.
Binnie Kirshenbaum is an American novelist and short story writer. She is a professor of the Writing Program at Columbia University School of the Arts.
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