Word (Mass Market Paperback)

by Coerte V. W. Felske (Author) "Word is, nobody wants to be sentenced to a life at the edge of somebody else's table..." (more)
Key Phrases: walking nightclub, aggressive womanizing, think duh, Baby Garbo, New York, Sydney Swinburn (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
Heyward Hoon is yet another brilliant but uncommercial and unproduced screenwriter careening around L.A. looking for a life amidst the cliches. His tale?both itinerary and people?is woefully familiar stuff: Hollywood newcomer strikes Faustian bargain in exchange for entree into inner circle. It's winningly told, though, with often ferocious humor, including a fresh, funny argot (e.g., "Wams" are waitress-actress-models). But everything goes soft for a happy, disappointing ending that would have shamed the fictional scripter. Felske had a better time of it in his previous The Shallow Man (Crown, 1995). Recommended for larger fiction collections.?David Bartholomew, NYPL, New York
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
For all of his mastery of the L.A. scene, we are taken by surprise to discover, 50 pages into the novel, that Heyward's primary income comes from his day job as a temporary filling clerk. Both his fortunes changes when Sydney Swinburn, head of Novastar Studios, takes him under his wing.

Swinburn is impressed by Heyward's social ease with beautiful women, and he makes a pact with him. In exchange for lessons on how to successfully score with women, he will let Heyward stay in a bungalow on his estate and encourage him as a screenwriter.

The only rule: He must keep his hands off Teal, the beautiful woman who also lives on his estate and who, of course, is the only women Heyward really wants.

Like Peter Farrelly's THE COMEDY WRITER, Michael Tolkin's THE PLAYER, and Peter Lefcourt's THE DEAL, WORD is a worthy new member of the growing genre of Hollywood novels in which idealistic would-be screenwriters and filmmakers experience disillusionment as they come up against the madly illogical Hollywood system, in which liars, con artists and charlatans occupy almost all of the positions of power. -- R. Hunter Garcia, USA Today, January 7, 1999

Masterfully bitter story in the Bruce Wagner/Michael Tolkin mode with a screenwriter hero who sneers at de rigeur Hollywood happy endings but is provided with one by his author (THE SHALLOW MAN, 1995).

Language is all this novel downloads - a torrent of L.A. buzzwords and insider cynicism unmatched since Odets and Lehman's SWEET SMELLS OF SUCCESS took on Manhattan's nightlife. As with Tony Curtis's seedy Sidney Falco, Felske pumps Heywood Hounestein so full of film babble he's ready to burst. To insecure but WASPish Heywood, who's written scripts on spec, with not one green-lighted, and who must tar everyone around him with is own shrunken sense of self, and leading man is dismissed as "Starman," struggling actors as "Strugs," and pretty faces with few goals as "8x10s." When Heywood - accompanied by his beautiful but alcoholic arm piece, Baby Garbo - meets mega-mogul Sydney Swinburn, he sees a way of perhaps getting his masterpiece, the script of his Age of Astonishment, sold at last. A wonderfully literate script, Sydney says, but, sadly, uncommercial, and he is in the business to make money. Still, he sees in Heywood a bookish ladies' man who can bring into this boorish super-producer's life just what he needs to fill a void: intimacy with the type of woman he has always challenged himself to attain. They strike a Faustian bargain to help each other as Sydney attends Heywood's charm school. Heywood, however, must not pursue Sydney's sought-after and mysterious Teal. When Heywood and Teal find each other irresistible, Sydney, the fearsome dark lord, assures Heywood's destruction in Hollywood.

Well, it's not Marlowe or Goethe, and cynics may snap their fangs at that big-bucks ending, but for film lovers the Hell-A hypechat will flick all of your fuses. -- Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 1998 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (March 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446609005
• ISBN-13: 978-0446609005
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #994,158 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Witty, engaging, clever, June 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Word (Hardcover)

This book had me laughing out loud every few pages. It was a fun read -- I was looking forward to each next chapter.

You can feel Howard's dripping insecurity, the rut his life is in, the corner he's painted for himself. The characters are all vivid and believable, with the exception of Sidney perhaps.

This is not a heavy or deep book -- just a ton of fun and really clever.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommend, June 26, 2003

By A Customer

First of all, I think it is very funny that everyone gave this book a great review except the two readers from Los Angeles, where this book is set! Maybe it hits too close to home for Angelenos who (I have found) overestimate their cultural and intellectual significance. As well as being completely full of themselves.
I read this book long before I came out to Los Angeles, and would like to read it again now that I have been here a few years. Back in a rural area of the East Coast, I thought it was a hilarious book that I could not put down. It is one of those books you are disappointed to have end. Sadly, some (a lot) of the book is true of the Hollywood scene.
Ok, so it's not some grand philosophical treatise, but it is a very witty and sharp view of Hollywood. I have read other Felske books, and they do not compare to clever writing of this book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Truth is stranger than fiction, February 24, 2000

By A Customer

If you haven't lived it, this book will make no sense. But if you are in the entertainment business, you have done the New York thing, you've done the LA thing, you will sit there saying, "This is amazing." It is LA in a nutshell and frightening how accurate it is.