Geez, dude. This thing was . . . I mean don't let the pink cover trick you. Some serious intensity here. I'm fully in love with this guy Stone. COL concerns a Hollywood production in Mexico, and basically revolves around the screenwriter (a serious coke-head) coming together with the star (who's 'troubled' to put it mildly), and what happens when they finally meet up on the set. The scenes featuring the star's schizophrenic(?) visions are some of the craziest things I've ever read—some serious horror-movie shit in an otherwise realist novel. Anyway, there's humor here, and but there's (mostly) just dark, dark shit, some real underbelly-of-Hollywood/personal humanity stuff. But not in a depraved or exposé or smarmy way. The dialogue is crisp as hell, all of the characters (there are a few) are realized and particularized . . . the book is very, very sad (in a general, not-having-anything-to-do-with-plot, tonal way), but also really entertaining. Yes, read it. Yes. This guy is GREAT.
What a bloody marvelous novelist Stone really is. I keep forgetting, maybe because there's something unobtrusive about his artistry, or maybe just because he produced such a small body of work. But no novel of his that I've read has been a dud, and this one is delectable. Not a word out of place, constantly entertaining and cramming a wealth of meaning within a strictly realist framework. Every scene in this novel about Hollywood is as riveting as a scene from a good Hollywood film (but more interestingly so, as the novel gives him more space than the fast pacing of a Hollywood film would actually allow him).
What do You think about Children Of Light (1999)?
Someone gave me this book for my birthday over ten years ago and told me they wanted to get me other works but the used bookstore didn't have them (probably Dog Soldiers and A Flag for Sunrise). So this would do. Finally read it. Clearly a masterful writer, and you would think that I, Wes grad, would love a book remixing King Lear and The Awakening, but I didn't love it. That said, it's a great drug book. Shows how people with mental illness fall by the wayside when they're surrounded by addicts who will only indulge other people's delusions so much. And Stone is great at letting you read a line and trusting the person means something else--he doesn't have to hit you over the head with it. But where Stone gets in over his head, relying on "Kid Stays in the Picture" clichés, is in the Hollywood stuff. The clash of Old vs. New Hollywood is overplayed, the plight of the screenwriter overstated, the kookiness of acting folk too "you see how kooky they are?" We know.
—Kevin
