Customer Reviews

The Carpetbaggers

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Harold Robbins, love him or hate him you cannot deny that he was a master storyteller. While The Carpetbaggers may not be great literature it is a great read. This book along with Puzo's The Godfather are great examples of the American power story.

The book gives us a twenty year glimpse into the life of Jonas Cord. Cord turns everything he touches into money while his own life is falling apart. The interesting thing about this novel is not really the story it tells but the way in which the story is told.

Told through the lives of the people Cord comes into contact with, Robbins gives us enough material for five novels let alone one. Here we have the history of the early twentieth century through the lives of a ex-gunfighter, a Hollywood actress, a movie company executive, and the proverbial prostitute with the heart of gold.

Robbins research into his time period was exhaustive and his storytelling ability is flawless. If there is a problem with the novel it is that it tends to go a little too deep for a little too long. No one character can be so much a part of the times that he is involved in so many historical events.

Part of the fun of any novel of this type is discovering who the major characters were based on. Cord is a clear pictue of Howard Hughes while Rina Marlow seems to be loosely based on Jean Harlow.

The reader needs to become immersed in this novel. One does not so much as read it but lives the lives of these characters if only for a little while. You let this one take you away and you embark on one hell of a ride.

Pop fiction like this is like candy. It does not stimulate great or exciting thought but it sure is fun. Isn't that the reason for reading in the first place?

No doubt, one of the greatest books writen in this century. Every man and woman in this world have a Jonas Cord and a Rina Marlowe somewhere in them. Jonas Cord, a legend in pulp-fiction, has become an epitome of ruthlessness, shrewdness and extreme romaticism. The other characters like Nevada Smith and Jenny Denton reflect the various perspectives in the life of every man and woman. From the gripping beginning to the extraordinary ending Mr.Robbins has made and attempt to touch the souls of all the readers across the globe Mr.Robbins you will be remembered forever for giving us Jonas Cord

Until I read Hollywoodland Kingpin, I thought this was the most profane book of them all and my favorite. The Jonas Cord/ Howard Hughes character is one we grudgingly respect because their accomplishments are so vast. The multi-stories that merge weave an exciting tapestry and must have been difficult to put together even for the talented Mr. Robbins--- Hollywood Babylon meets Zane Gray. It is too bad that none of the several movies that have been extrapolated from this book have ever captured the glory that was written. This is a book that sooner or later everyone should read. It represents the change in the literary paradigm that has given the paperback world its direction for the last 40 years.

If you're not a Robbins reader this would be a great place to start. It's pure entertainment, with a page-flipping pace and an excellent story. This was a monster bestseller in the early 1960s and you'll see why after Robbins hooks you on page one. Tremendous fun in the vein of Sheldon's "Master of the Game" or Archer's "Kane and Abel," but there's a lot more sex, violence and language in this one. Guaranteed to please.

Written in 1961, The Carpetbaggers is really a tale like "The Aviator" - about a manly rich airplane flyer and maker who gets involved with Hollywood. The references to real life people are so thinly veiled that you sometimes forget that he is pretending to have made up the situations. But then you're jarred back into the fiction, because part of how Harold keeps you hooked is by throwing in gratuitous sex scenes ... constantly.

One of the very first references is when Jonas Cord is landing his plane - the landing field is apparently like a female naked body. In a short period of time, Jonas' father dies, and he is immediately raping his step-mom, Rina. He then sleeps his way across the US. He's got a naked daughter upstairs while he negotiates business with the father downstairs. You learn that Rina had slept with her adopted brother for many years as a teen, even becoming pregnant. Rina then made advances on her adopted father, which he rejects in horror. She becomes a bi-sexual for a while, living with her lesbian female teacher in France while also being mistress to an older man.

While most of these things might seem ho-hum in modern times, to the 1961 audience, it was incredibly shocking. It would have been enough to put in one such item in the book and to give it meaning - but the situations were just piled one on top of the other in order to keep further shocking the reader. Jennie is drugged and raped! Then she goes to work for an abortionist! Then she has an affair with him, even though he was married! Then she becomes a high-paid whore! There's little chance to develop the character in here, except as the repeated victim of horror after horror.

I'm not saying the book is not engrossing. It's 679 pages, and I read it in a single night. But it's more like watching a train wreck, rather than enjoying a good story. I don't mind reading about sex, but the situations were very contrived. The story was focussed on those sex details vs the other things that went on in peoples lives that helped to define them.

I was bothered by the many stereotypes in the story. It's about sexy, handsome white rich people. There are a few jewish people - and they are not portrayed very well at all. I believe there's one black person - the butler who is the 'wise dutiful loyal silent type'. The American Indian woman is dutiful and quiet (and of course goes through an explicitly sexual rite before marriage, described in bloody detail).

I also disliked the ending of the story. After everything else that went on, it was way too contrived and neat. POOF, characters that really didn't have that much in common suddenly decide to live happily ever after. There are a number of huge plot holes, but I won't give away story details by revealing those. There are occasional sentence structure errors that make it unclear who is speaking, which means you have to re-read a page twice to get the gist of how the discussion progresses.

But that all being said, it is interesting how the book is broken up into sections, each about a certain person, and how you go back in time to learn why they became the way they were. It's interesting to hear what people in the 60s thought about culture. There are all sorts of "laugh with me!" references, as people back in the "old days" (the story begins in the 20s) think talking movies won't catch on, that plastics is a strange new item, and that World War II will never begin.

This is a book to read to understand what the 60s was all about, as people moved from the staid, quiet days of the 50s into the more free-wheeling times of the 60s. It's also a book to read just because it's one of the top selling books of all time, to be able to discuss the ideas in it if someone else brings the topic up. Just don't expect anything very enlightening!

Forty years later and this novel is still a MUST READ! However. I wish that Harold had taken this book and split it into two. Although Hollywood failed to capture the magic when they separated the tales, the books could've been sequels--- going from Max Sands' boyhood story to Jonas Cord Jr.'s boyhood story and then the sequel would pick up when Jonas Sr. dies and we're off to the skies of Hollywood. But great literature always leaves you wanting more. The characters are veiled reproductions to be sure . . . Howard Hughes, Jean Harlow, Marilyn Monroe . . . but unlike in Carter Beats the Devil--- that does the same thing by re-writing Houdini--- Robbins makes his characters and plot interesting enough that you forgive him for copy catting. This is a fascinating story told by a master storyteller who's own life story would certainly make a great book. If you're ready for a fresh perspective on Hollywood of old---filled with the scintilating erotica that Harold Robbins got us hooked on--- check out Olde Hollywood by Thorne Peters who not only picks up where Robbins leaves off, but keeps on going to find his own tawdry realm.

Harold Robbins has written numerous books, almost too many to count. If one follows his career cronologically, beginning with a Stone For Danny Fischer and ending with the posthumously 'subsititute author' written Sin City, one can almost trace Robbins' improving talent/success leading to his increasingly heavy drug use and finally see the work suffer as he cranked out bools faster and faster to keep up on his income tax back-payments. The Carpetbaggers was written at the point in the man's life just after he hit his true stride as an author and just before his cocaine madness sabotaged his work.

If you've never read a Harold Robbins book, do yourself a favor and read The Carpetbaggers first. Even though the racey passages seem campy now, the story is just as good as it was in the early 1960's when the book was first released.

. . . but it's still trash. I would have enjoyed the book more, because I have to admit, Robbins is a great story teller, but it seemed to be the same thing over and over again--business deal, gratuitous sex scene, business deal, gratuitous sex scene. The Max Sand/Nevada Smith story line, at least, was different, but westerns aren't my genre. It's a good enough book for what it sets out to do (on that score, I'd give it four stars), but in the end, it was all just too repetitive. Guess I'm getting a little more highbrow in my old age!

I always know a book is a fun read when I find myself making excuses to read it rather than work on my "Hunny-Do" list. According to at least one source this book is the 4th most read novel of all time. I don't know if that's really true but certainly it has been a widely read story for more than 40 years so obviously a lot of people have read it. The book apparently is somewhat notorious, largely for pushing the sexual boundaries of the time, right up to the edge. By today's standards it is relatively tame and, in fact, most of the sexual scenes occur offstage although there is a lot of innuendo. The book is fairly long; my paperback is almost 700 pages long with pretty small print.

The main story takes place over a 20 year period between the World Wars. The main character is a Howard Hughes type tycoon named Jonas Cord with all sorts of business interests but most especially aircraft development and Hollywood pictures. His is mostly a tragic story up until the very end when he finally realizes what makes him happy. It is interesting to note that Harold Robbins knew Howard Hughes fairly well but despite so many similarities to Hughes, Robbins claims the model for the Jonas Cord character was actually Bill Lear (developer of the Lear jet and the 8-track tape player). The backdrop for the novel is absorbing as well; we get to see the roaring 20s, the depression era 30's, the lead up to World War II as well as the war itself; all major impacts on the plot.

The intriguing thing about this book is not so much the story but rather, how the story is told. It is divided into eight sections: four sections are Jonas Cord's life told in his own first person point of view and the other four sections are devoted to the backstories of four key people who Jonas interacts with during his life. One is a former gunfighter turned stuntman turned star of the silent movie era. One is a Hollywood actress (allegedly based on Jean Harlow). A third is a movie company executive and a fourth is a high-priced courtesan turned movie starlet. We get absorbed in their individual stories; they are very captivating all on their own. And it is really through them that we come to know Jonas himself. When you put the whole thing together you really get a great sense of the characters as well as the era itself. I have to say I really enjoyed the novel a lot more than I expected I would.

When his father dies, Jonas Cord Jr inherits his father's business empire, Cord Explosives, and before long he's also involved in aviation and the movie business. Cord's story, told in first person narrative, is the frame of the novel, which also tells the stories of people Cord gets to know throughout his life, including Nevada Smith and Rina Marlowe, creating a rather complex, nonlinear narrative, spanning at least four decades and running over 600 pages. It works quite well, up to a point, but about two thirds into the book we're again introduced to new characters, David Woolf and later Jennie Denton, and get to read their whole life histories, and by then the novel starts to feel a bit too disjointed. Although the characters are interesting, and all the stories tie up nicely together the pace suffers from too many protagonists. If the book had been shorter, with some of the weaker parts removed, it would have been great but as it is, I'd give it a 3+ rating.