Customer Reviews

I Was Howard Hughes: A Novel

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
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Author Steven Carter gives the Howard Hughes legend a new treatment here, creating a fictional biographer, Alton Reece, to tell a fictional story about this real man, using as sources an invented and entirely fictional bibliography. The fictional Reece interviews Ava Gardner, Lana Turner, Jean Peters, and other Hughes contacts, filling the novel with detail as he personalizes the reclusive Hughes. All the interviews, notes from Hughes's "diary," quotations by Richard Nixon, memos by an FBI field agent, transcripts of tape recordings, and comments by Hughes's former employees are imaginative and often hilarious creations of the author, not real at all. Although some readers may question the propriety of basing the entire "biography" on invented quotations purportedly made by real people, the book is clearly label as fiction, and the basic information about Hughes's life is largely factual.

Modesty, self-effacement, and humility are not biographer Reece's strong suits, as we note from the opening pages. His first book, Melville and the Whale, was successful, and, he tells us, he secured a seven figure advance for the Hughes biography. His assistants do the "tedious aspects of research," he doesn't get along with people at the Hughes Archives, and he accepts money from Fox TV, though, ultimately, things don't "work out." He likens his experience with the prestigious MacArthur Foundation to "dealing with a seventeenth-century French king handing out Christmas Lagniappes." As Reece recreates the downward spiral of Hughes's life, from the Hollywood days, through his confrontations with Bugsy Siegel, and to his use of a double to confuse the U.S. Government, the reader notes a parallel deterioration in Reece's own life.

For anyone intrigued with the Howard Hughes story, this novel provides some unique, albeit fictional, glimpses into what might have been Hughes's thinking and into events which might have shaped his decisions. Humor, much of it slapstick, keeps the reader grounded in (fictional) reality, however much Hughes and Reece might be losing their touch, and as the novel comes to a wonderfully ironic close and author Steven Carter has the last laugh, even the most jaded reader will laugh along with him. Mary Whipple

Smart, eccentric, and by turns hilarious, Carter's first novel is more compelling and accomplished than at least ninety percent of the mouthy, self-referential, post-postmodern drivel that fills the pages of McSweeney's and passes for literary "art" these days. Melding fact and fiction into one cohesive story, Carter resurrects a number of American icons--Hughes, Ava Gardner, Lana Turner, J. Edgar Hoover, Robert Kennedy, Jimmy Hoffa, Bugsy Seigel, to name a few--but without the hardboiled punchiness of James Ellroy or the mechanical syntax of Don DeLillo. In this extremely impressive debut, Carter weaves together a multiplicity of voices without missing a beat. Most impressive is Carter's ability to channel the quirkiness of both Hughes and his shady biographer without turning them into one-dimensional jokes. A timely release given the forthcoming Hughes biopic directed by Martin Scorsese. Read the book of one master storyteller (Carter, or should I say Alton Reece?), then watch the film of another!

This book offers an intoxicating immersion into the world of Howard Hughes and his imaginary biographer, Alton Reece. As a former aerospace employee, I was highly interested in the details author Steven Carter wove into his tight, dazzling narrative. Anyone who has driven by the Westside and South Bay area of LA should realize what rich turf Hughes lived in, including the airplane factories that dotted and still grace the landscape (if you know where to drive). This book creates a small gem of a world that reflects the larger intellectual possibilities that Hughes once embodied, and sadly, lost along with his fiction biographer Reece.

A laugh out loud book. Very entertaining and an interesting way to tell a story. You'll enjoy it and promptly hand it to someone else to do the same. Left me wanting to read something with a little more substance on the man.

This story (and I had to keep reminding myself--THIS IS FICTION)--made me laugh, made me cry, made me wonder, and made me think. If there were more books like this one, I would buy more books. When may I expect a sequel???

This is a unique work. It would have been easy for Carter to go for cheap laughs. He doesn't. He stands aside and lets the story run. Biographer Alton Reece is everywhere. Amazingly, we do not even sense the presence of Steven Carter. Most writers can't do that.
The scenes with Hughes' body double were among the funniest I have read in a lifetime of reading. The work is brilliantly understated. Cater has literally created a literary form unlike anything seen before. How wonderful! How rare!

Beneath the humor of this work is a deep sorrow. We are all Howard Hughes on one level or another. Every damn thing is insane and Carter knows it.
I Was Howard Hughes is the most original book since A Confederacy of Dunces. It is similar to Barth's The End of the Road. It's funny as hell but will also wring you out and throw you in bed for a week. I hope it gets the audience it deserves. Carter should win the Pulitzer Prize.

This book is a lot of fun to read. It really keeps you guessing until the last page. It is very well done and expertly written. It's funny, too, and a page-turner. Steven Carter is an up and coming young novelist with his whole career ahead of him.

I highly recommend picking up this excellent first edition.

Oh my gosh this book was so funny. I could not put it down. I had no idea who Howard Hughes was until I read this book. I laughed out loud so many times. It says right in front of the book that some of it is based on fact and other parts are made up - but it all felt so real and true. I believed every word because I don't know any better! I had a hard time separating it from a made up novel to a biography of an eccentric man's life - but wow what a womanizer he was. Another reason I liked this book is because it's off the wall - not mainstream. It's unique and entertaining!

is what I'd actually give this book. This book does not really follow the typical methods of storytelling. For starters, the narrator is a fictional biographer, but much of what the real author wrote is largely factual. In plain English it is a study in contraries. The book was relatively humorous and touching at times. Howard Hughes was an incredibly fascinating individual - the likes of which we will probably not see again in our lifetime. During my reading I kept thinking "Wow, this guy was nuts but I damn if I don't like him". I think that the author did a great job of making Hughes likable and most of all he really conveyed the magnetism that Hughes embodied. What I didn't like about this book was the narrator Mr. Reece. He was a pretty unlikable character. He came off as pompous and full of himself which I realize was supposed to be a comparison to Hughes but let's face it - Hughes is one individial who defied comparison. It's one thing to have an unlikable character and it's another to allow that character to have narrative rein. Reading this book was much like reading the diary of someone I did not like and having the content of the diary be about someone I did like. I wouldn't recommend purchasing this book. It is a better library read and for God's sake try not to read this before you have see the movie The Aviator which is out right now. I think that some of the magic that was Hughes may be lost to you at that point.