Customer Reviews

Evening in Byzantium

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong! Aaaaarggghhhhh!!! How can someone review a book without reading it?!! There are no terrorists, none, nada. This has NOTHING to do with terrorists! Apparently there was some BS sensationalist movie made of a very loose adaptation of this book that concocted some stupid lurid plot about terrorists but that movie had nothing whatsoever to do with the actual book.

This is actually a very quiet and contemplative work, an alienated poet-at-heart addressing the crazy tumult in the world around him. Not at all what you'd expect from a big best-selling author like Shaw. It's the sort of thing one might deliberately sub-vocalize as one reads just to catch the narrator's rhythm and to roll the ideas around in one's head before moving on to the next chapter. And quite bleak-- most readers would probably find the whole thing less-than-uplifting to be sure and indeed somewhat unwholesome but it's not at all tedious and considering the long twisted history the protagonist relives in its pages relatively brief.

All in all much deeper than one would expect... think "La Dolce Vita" with William Holden playing Mastroianni.

"...They were honest mean and thieves, pimps and panderers and men of virtue.

Therewere beautiful women and delicious girls,

handsome men with the faces of swines..."

"...They were all gamblers in a game with no rules,

placing their bets debonairly or in the sweat of fear..."

"...These are some of the characters in IRWIN SHAW'S BESTSELLING evening in byzantium..."

[from the Amazon's Product Description]

It is 1970s Movies Festival in Cannes. Jesse Craig, 48 years old producer, with receding fame, very tangled person life, and drinking problem comes to the festival looking for answers. There he attends a number of parties hosted by Americans living in Europe, provides us with a commentary on a movie industry of the day, the morals, the youth, the views (pouring in a lot of his own Shaw's bitterness), exchanges stage-like one-liners with a very diverse set of people (including writers, directors, agents, actors, etc), gets intoxicated all the time, and sleeps with a twenty-two years old Gail Mc Kinnon, that first appears into his hotel room with an aura of mystery and suspense and at the end turns out to be simply a kind of groupie (very disappointing). Wife, mistresses, piled up bills, career drops, and heavy drinking take its toll and Craig succumbs to bloody ulcer. While he is in the hospital his script gets approved, all of his women dot on him, and life generally looks up. But the first thing Craig does when he walks out of the hospital is the very thing that doctor forbade him to do - drink of whisky.

Terorrists bother film-goers and critics at Cannes Film Festival. Best safe if you wear sunglasses (so to minimize your identity). '99 Oscars honoring Kazan has potential for "...life to imitate art...". Wouldn't that be cool? Let's GO!