Wasted Beauty [Paperback]

Eric Bogosian (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: NY (1980)
• ASIN: B000N7I9SK
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read This Book, April 25, 2005

By 

Kevin D (Albany, NY United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Wasted Beauty: A Novel (Hardcover)

If one were to equate Bogosian's first novel, Mall: A Novel, to his play subUrbia, then one could also draw a similar parallel between 'Wasted Beauty' and his recent play 'Red Angel.' The Jeff of both Mall and subUrbia were two closely related characters, much like the leading men in Wasted Beauty and Red Angel. In print, however, Bogosian is able to delve deeper into the characters' inner thoughts. When reading his work, one can just tell that Bogosian is an actor -- he often follows dialogue directly with subtext, which I liked. Rick, the main character in 'Beauty', actually has roots that go much further back in Bogosian's work than 'Angel'. He is reminiscent of the peeping-tom in Mall, who was a descendent of Bogosian's Recovering Male character from his solos. If you've been following his work, I would say you will definitely appreciate this book, and if you haven't, now's a good time to start.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't put down, May 30, 2008

By 

Hillary A. Thomas (Omaha, NE USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wasted Beauty: A Novel (Hardcover)

This was the first novel I have read by Eric Bogosian (I'm currently reading Mall), and I am hooked. His beautiful writing as the three main characters (Billy, Rick and Reba) and the ability to switch between all three to first person will keep you reading. As the reader, you develop sincere feeling for these characters, even though on the outside they look like a raging alcoholic, a drug addicted model and a cheating husband. Bogosian dives deeper into each of their brains, making it a must read!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Wasted Talent!, January 13, 2011

By 

Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wasted Beauty: A Novel (Hardcover)

This isn't a bad novel. It isn't "bad" writing; it's "cheap" writing -- cheap thrills, cheap sex drugs & violence, cheap dysfunction, cheap degradation, cheap hatred, none of which are implausible or irrelevant in America Today. But the whole spread -- magazine ad spread, spread legs, spread face down in puke on the sidewalk, the spread between wealth and destitution, the spread between innocence and experience -- reads to me as mere sensationalist exploitation.

Is it Eric Bogosian's fault if people want to read such stuff? To wallow in filth and ugliness vicariously? Of course not! This marketability of misery, this rage for "rage," has been around for a long time. It was the theme if Bogosian's own stage drama and film Talk Radio, at the climax of which his avatar, radio host Barry Champlain, dies for our cultural sins.

So where am I going with this review?

This is a "grunge novel." Specifically, it's a grunge novel for intellectual readers, replete with allusions to Baudelaire, Hesse, and painter Arthur Dove. It's chock full of snappy sentences and terse, well-crafted descriptions. It's a pretty good grunge novel, but that wasn't what I was hoping for.