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Tara Hanks

~ Author of 'The Mmm Girl' and 'Wicked Baby'

Tara Hanks

Tag Archives: F. Scott Fitzgerald

2015: A Year in Books

16 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by marina72 in Books, Fiction, Film, Madonna, Marilyn Monroe, Music, Non-Fiction

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A Manual for Cleaning Women, A Year in Books, Alberto Moravia, Backlands, Before Marilyn, Bobbie Gentry, C. Joseph Greaves, Caryl Phillips, Cathi Unsworth, Clarice Lispector, David L. Jones, David Wills, Eileen, Elena Ferrante, Encyclopedia Madonnica 20, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fires in the Dark, Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee, Louise Doughty, Lucia Berlin, Madonna, Marilyn in the Flash, Marilyn Monroe, Matthew Rettenmund, Michelle Morgan, Ode to Billie Jo, Otessa Moshfegh, Rebecca Wait, Stewart O'Nan, Tara Murtha, The Followers, The Ipswich Witch, The Lost Child, The Story of the Lost Child, The Time of Indifference, Tom & Lucky (and George & Cokey Flo), Victoria Shorr, West of Sunset, Without the Moon, Wuthering Heights

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Reading Clarice Lispector for the first time is like falling in love. Each of her stories is a rare jewel. Shocking, funny and wildly imaginative, this collection is a landmark, reclaiming her as one of the underrated voices of the twentieth century.

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The final volume in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan series rages like a cyclone. No happy endings here, only the transcendence of real art.

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Lucia Berlin was a wonderful American writer, whose stories are warm, yet unflinching. She led an eventful life, and while there are strong autobiographical elements in her work, she was also richly imaginative. Continue reading →

Born on This Day: Ina Claire 1893-1985

15 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by marina72 in Anniversaries, Film, Jeanne Eagels, Theatre

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David Belasco, Ethel Barrymore, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ina Claire, Jeanne Eagels, Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed, John Gilbert, Jumping Jupiter, The National Red Cross Pageant, W. Somerset Maugham

ina_claire_by_vintagedream_stock-d4qgoo8Of Irish descent, Ina Fagan was born in Washington on October 15, 1893. She never knew her father, who had died in a car accident four months previously. With no family breadwinner, Ina and her mother went to live in a boarding-house. From an early age, Ina had a talent for impersonations, and made her vaudeville debut in 1909 as ‘the dainty mimic’, under her mother’s maiden name of Ina Claire. Continue reading →

Jeanne Eagels: A Fitzgeraldian Life

17 Thursday Sep 2015

Posted by marina72 in Jeanne Eagels, Non-Fiction

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David Marshall James, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jeanne Eagels, Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed, Ted Coy

Jeanne72dpiTarainAnother great review of Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed, this time from blogger David Marshall James. He compares Jeanne’s turbulent life to a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was fascinated by her husband, Ted Coy, a retired football star – even depicting Coy in his fiction.

It’s as if F. Scott Fitzgerald penned her life’s story:  Midwest girl with stars in her eyes makes it to Broadway, seizes the role of a lifetime, then declines as dramatically as she has arisen … Authors Eric Woodard and Tara Hanks have expended an exceptional effort in presenting Jeanne Eagels, through the record of her life and her accomplishments, and through the memories of those who knew her.

Careless People

07 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by marina72 in Books, Fiction, Non-Fiction

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1920s, Careless People, F. Scott Fitzgerald, For Books' Sake, Sarah Churchwell, The Great Gatsby

Careless People by Sarah Churchwell

My review of Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby – a brilliant new exploration of F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s 1920s masterpiece, by Sarah Churchwell – is posted today at For Books’ Sake.

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My 3 Favourite: Unfinished Novels

My 3 Favourite: Unfinished Novels

28 Wednesday Sep 2011

Posted by marina72 in Books, Fiction

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Beryl Bainbridge, Bobby Kennedy, F. Scott Fitzgerald, For Books' Sake, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Irving Thalberg, Netochka Nezvanova, Robert F. Kennedy, Sheilah Graham, The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress, The Last Tycoon, The Love of the Last Tycoon, Unfinished Novels

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‘Everyone has a novel inside them’, it is often said – but most of these novels will never be finished. Charlotte Brontё’s late fragment, Emma Brown, inspired the final novel by Clare Boylan in 2004, while the manuscript of Jane Austen’s The Watsons was recently sold at auction for nearly £1 million.

Posthumous publication is nothing new – collections of essays and short stories by Virginia Woolf were unseen until after her suicide in 1941 – but nonetheless, this prolific sub-genre raises questions about the creative process, and its ownership.

The Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, began his first full-length novel, Netochka Nezvanova, in 1846.  Three years later, when the first section of Netochka Nezvanova was serialised, Dostoyevsky was imprisoned for his political beliefs.  He never resumed work on his fledgling novel.

Divided into three main episodes, the story recounts the early life of Netochka Nezvanova, whose name literally means ‘nameless nobody’. Born into poverty, Netochka spends her first decade in the care of her sickly mother, and her stepfather, Efimov, a failed musician whom Netochka idolises.

By her own admission, ‘it was a most unchildlike love’, and Efimov’s manipulation of his step-daughter – turning her against her hapless mother and persuading her to steal money, which he then spends on drink – is genuinely chilling.

After the deaths of her parents, Netochka is adopted by an aristocratic family. But she never really transcends her ‘outsider’ status. In many ways, Netochka’s lack of identity makes her a perfect storyteller, as she absorbs the emotions of those around her.

On the cusp of adolescence, Netochka embarks on a passionate friendship with the spoiled Princess Katya. Dostoyevsky’s nascent prose style has been dismissed as ‘over-heated’, but nonetheless it conveys a remarkable, half-conscious eroticism.

The final part of this novel-in-progress is less striking. Netochka’s role of go-between, in the unhappy marriage of Alexandra Mikhailovna and her domineering husband, is sketchy. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this episode is Netochka’s clandestine reading of forbidden books.

In the years before his death in 1940, F. Scott Fitzgerald was living in Los Angeles, and working on a novel about the movie industry while penning scripts and short stories. Fitzgerald considered Hollywood ‘the last frontier’ and was fascinated by the immigrant moguls who had pioneered American cinema.

The Last Tycoon was published in its incomplete state in 1941, edited by his friend, Edmund Wilson. In 1976 it was filmed with Robert De Niro in the lead role. But it wasn’t until 1994 that Fitzgerald’s original, unaltered manuscript saw the light of day.

The Love of the Last Tycoon: A Western is perhaps the closest we will get to what could have been Fitzgerald’s masterpiece.  Even unfinished, The Last Tycoon ranks alongside The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night.

Monroe Stahr, the Hollywood producer and hero of the novel, was probably based on Irving Thalberg, the ‘boy wonder’ of MGM, whom Fitzgerald met briefly. Cecelia Brady, daughter of Monroe’s rival, narrates part of the story.

She affects a jaded tone – ‘Writers aren’t people exactly,’ she sneers. However, Cecelia is infatuated by Stahr. ‘I was head over heels in love with him then,’ she admits, ‘and you can take what I say for what it’s worth.’

Stahr’s doomed romance with Kathleen Moore was probably inspired by Fitzgerald’s ongoing relationship with the English journalist Sheilah Graham. And Stahr’s dead wife, the movie star Minna Davis, may remind the reader of Fitzgerald’s own former muse, Zelda Fitzgerald.

Beryl Bainbridge died in 2010. In her later years, hampered by poor health and failing eyesight, Bainbridge had attempted, and discarded, several book ideas. A surviving manuscript, published in May, was inspired by a diary the author had kept during a 1968 trip to America, according to The Telegraph.

The Girl in the Polka-Dot Dress focuses on the travels of an unlikely couple, ‘Washington Harold’, and a young woman, Rose, whom he had met previously in London. They hope to track down a mutual friend, the enigmatic Dr Wheeler, who is involved with Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign.

Those familiar with the details of Kennedy’s assassination – outside a Los Angeles hotel, as he made a speech accepting the Democratic nomination – will know that Bainbridge’s title refers to a girl in a polka-dot dress, reported to have fled the scene.

Bainbridge’s style is, as always, uncanny – and Rose, with her steely wisdom hidden beneath apparent kookiness, recalls the author herself. The novel is a cross between a road movie and a political thriller, detailing the clash between jaded Europe and hopeful America, whose certainties will soon be shattered.

As with all unfinished novels, the reader may be feel cheated. But with sensitive editing, a writer’s presence can still be felt, even if the last pages remain unwritten.

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