Beautiful Wasps Having Sex [Hardcover]

Dori Carter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 3, 2000

Meet Frankie Jordan, a screenwriter living a rather perilous life in the wilds of Hollywood. She's turning forty, her husband wants a divorce, and all she can think about is the script she can't finish. Enter Jonathan Prince, a confident, seductive twenty-four-year-old agent-in-training.  In a town that takes glee in the failure of others, Jonathan's the only one who seems to recognize Frankie's brilliance. So begins the tragic comedy that consumes Frankie's life. The lunacy of trying to sell her script is described in harrowing detail. But it's when her script finally does sell that the real nightmare begins. Longing to discover why Hollywood attracts and rewards so many "little monsters," she's compelled to confront how Jews feel about themselves in a town that both loves and hates its own invention -- the beautiful WASP.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This low-key Hollywood version of All About Eve (without the multiple points of view) portrays the rise to power of Jonathan Prince, as narrated by 39-year-old screenwriter Frankie Jordan. Riffing on Jewish Hollywood's WASP envyAWASPs as role models, WASPs as ideal on-screen characters, WASPs as an alien raceAauthor and ex-screenwriter Carter pieces together an amusing, if occasionally wearing and sour, satire. Frankie (n?e Francine Fingerman) first meets Jonathan in 1989; he's the new secretary for her agent, Freyda Wong. Separated from screenwriter husband and ur-WASP Hart, Frankie latches onto Jonathan, a 24-year-old social climber and aggressively secular Jew, as a friendly voice in an otherwise hostile worldAor presumably because in Hollywood, any human connection (even a possibly faked one) is better than loneliness. Herschel, a struggling middle-aged screenwriter, and his bubbly wife, Miriam, are good friends in need, too, and they rent Frankie a small house in their backyard. When Frankie finally sells her screenplayAthe 40-year chronicle of a woman named Ivy and her gay cousin ArthurAit seems things are looking up. The Jewish producers hire her to do a rewrite, mainly to tone down the Jewish ethnicity of the script, and Jonathan signs on as Frankie's secretary. Before Frankie's very eyes, however, Jonathan undergoes an unpleasant transformation, working, cajoling and maneuvering his way to power and status. The culmination of his efforts as a junior mover and shaker is a glossily tasteful Christmas (not Hanukkah) party he hosts at his apartment. Carter leaches her tale of suspense by having Frankie admit up front and in retrospect that she is only a minor story writer, but the details of day-to-day, dog-eat-dog life in lower-echelon Hollywood carry the tale. Still, when Frankie says about Jonathan, "I wonder how I ever could have liked him," readers will likely agree. Major ad/promo, regional author appearances. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Writing for the screen requires telling the directors, producers, and actors what to show the audience. Conversely, as countless undergraduate writing instructors remind new students, good narrative fiction should showAnot tellAreaders the story. Carter's debut novel about what goes on in the movie business among writers, agents, and producers is, unfortunately, long on telling. Frankie Jordan, recently separated from her more successful Gentile husband, re-enters the cannibalistic world of Hollywood, trying to provoke interest in her new screenplay. Frankie is sympathetic and gullible, more easily manipulated by power-hungry agent-trainee Jonathan Prince than the reader is. We listen to Frankie's depressingAif realisticAaccount of her travels through the offices of unresponsive agents, misguided producers, and incompetent rewriters, a downward spiral Carter almost balances with convenient subplots, including the predicaments of Frankie's gramma and her best friends, a teacher's aide and a playwright. There are lots of well-argued observations about the relationship of American Jews to the movie industry and vice versa, but as fiction this is disappointingly flat.AFrancisca Goldsmith, Berkeley P.L., CA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1st edition (July 3, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688174647
• ISBN-13: 978-0688174644
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,753,662 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Poor Choice of Title Robs Fine Novel of Fifth Star, August 26, 2000

By 

Steven Winnett - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beautiful Wasps Having Sex (Hardcover)

Titles matter, and it is a great shame that Dori Carter went with this title for her book. The title is just too clever by half. It will mislead and misdirect readers. This book is about neither Beautiful WASPs nor sex.

Instead, what we have here is a wonderful novel about one of the most significant manifestations of the Jewish presence in America, namely the Jews who work in Hollywood as screenwriters, agents, and producers. It shows how they take their own experience of life (which is clearly drawn upon their own experiences as Jews in America, and more distantly on their knowledge of the history of the treatment of Jews within gentile cultures) and transform it into something understandable to the American public, especially that public between the two coasts which must be pleased to make a movie that is a success. To this end they create an idealized culture of the Beautiful WASP which they use in these movies as a mirror to reflect back onto the mainstream of American life not what is, but rather what is dreamed of. Dori Carter has written a book which is, I think, an insightful exploration of this aspect of the Jewish experience in America. She can be laugh-out-loud funny as she lampoons the utterly superficial world of Hollywood and its creations. And yet at the same time she has written a book which is a serious exploration of the question of how this unique group can and does relate to the broader American culture within which it dwells. I read in a review that this was a book about "self-hating Jews" presumably because these characters try so desperately hard to mask who they are. I do not agree with this statement. A closer reading of the novel shows the narrator coming to understand and appreciate the world she remains a part of, no matter what the superificial surroundings. I hope that both Jewish and non-Jewish readers will not be put off by the novel's awful title and will instead let themselves enter a fascinating world which is portrayed faithfully with humor, pathos, and great understanding.

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars BEAUTIFUL WASPS HAVING SEX, July 11, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Beautiful Wasps Having Sex (Hardcover)

BEAUTIFUL WASPS HAVING SEX manages to be both a very funny read about the travails of a Hollywood screenwriter, and a compelling look at what drives people in the movie business. It rises way above the usual Hollywood novel in that it considers both the Jewish psyche, and the roots of the entertainment business in explaining why, "No one's very surprised by bad behavior in Hollywood."

Frankie Jordan, the narrator is a forty-year-old writer whose marriage is ending and career is faltering when she meets her agent's secretary, Jonathan Prince, a twenty four-year-old whose career is just beginning. The story traces his rise to power as seen through her eyes. Jonathan, like his predecessor Sammy Glick, rises by stepping on the people who were stupid enough to trust him. But Dori Carter also guides us through the workings of the movie industry from a writer's point of view by following the struggle Frankie endures in trying to get her screenplay made with just a little bit of integrity intact. Agents, producers, development girls, studio executives...they're all here spouting dialog that made this reader laugh out loud.

Most of the characters are Jewish, with a few well-chosen token WASPs. Among the Jews,Yiddish is sprinkled in conversations both as a self-deprecating reference to their poor, politically incorrect forebears - "The shvartzeh comes tomorrow" - and as an acknowledgement that they all came from the same, fearful world. The title of the book has to do with one of the many ironies in the book: These Hollywood Jews wish they could feel as carefree and safe as the beautiful WASPS whose image they have done such a splendid job in packaging. As Jerry Slotnick, a schlock producer explains: "It's the jealousy love/hate thing that the Jews have for the WASPS. The WASPs don't have to be deep...They don't feel obliged to suffer. Their God isn't as demanding as our God. He doesn't make you get circumcised, command you to sacrifice your son, and then forbid you to eat spareribs on top of it."

This is one Hollywood book you will NOT be embarrassed to be seen reading on the beach.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful wasps making beautiful reading, August 11, 2000

By 

STEPHEN L. MILES (BALTIMORE, MD. USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beautiful Wasps Having Sex (Hardcover)

it's rare to read a book that is both an insiders guide to an interesting subject matter, ie. hollywood movie scene, and at that same time provide such great entertainment to the on going relationship between the jewish world and that of the wasp. Sad, funny, entertaining, informative, etc. - all in one. A rarity and hopefully this writer has another one in the oven.