Starlite Terrace |
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| Author:
| Roth, Patrick |
| Translator:
| Winston, Krishna |
| Series title: | SB-the German List Ser. |
| ISBN: | 978-0-85742-082-4 |
| Publication Date: | Jan 2012 |
| Publisher: | Seagull Books
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| Book Format: | Hardback |
| List Price: | AUD $46.99 |
Book Description:
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Dark stories of failed dreams and contemporary desperation in Los Angeles.
In a rundown Los Angeles apartment building--the titular Starlite Terrace--Patrick Roth unfurls the tragic linked stories of Rex, Moss, Gary, and June, four neighbors, in a sort of burlesque of the Hollywood modern. In each of their singular collisions with fame, Roth's dark prose presages a universal and mythical fate of desperation. In "The Man at Noah's Window,"...
More DescriptionDark stories of failed dreams and contemporary desperation in Los Angeles.
In a rundown Los Angeles apartment building--the titular Starlite Terrace--Patrick Roth unfurls the tragic linked stories of Rex, Moss, Gary, and June, four neighbors, in a sort of burlesque of the Hollywood modern. In each of their singular collisions with fame, Roth's dark prose presages a universal and mythical fate of desperation.
In "The Man at Noah's Window," Rex shares the story of his father, a supposed hand double for Gary Cooper in High Noon. In "Eclipse of the Sun," Moss, who lives in fear of the next holocaust, awaits a visit from the long-lost daughter he has tracked down. In "Rider on the Storm," Gary, a rock drummer and born-again Christian, who "almost played" on the Turtles' 60s-hit "Happy Together," strives to find an escape from his personal guilt. And in "The Woman in the Sea of Stars," June, a former Hollywood studio secretary whose husband once cheated on her with Marilyn Monroe, makes the best of a disconnected life until she emerges reborn through ashes strewn in the illuminated swimming pool of the Starlite Terrace.
In each of these four tales of wannabes and almost-weres, Roth's L.A. portraits unfold in rare style, and, in Krishna Winston's masterful translation, the hopeless, loveless perversion of an Ed Ruscha-inspired California becomes a compelling pageant of all-American grotesques that is not to be missed.