Overview

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," 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.

 

ISBN-13

9781803092119

ISBN-10

1803092114

Weight

0.49 Pounds

Dimensions

5.00 x 0.60 x 8.00 In

List Price

$21.00

Edition

1st Edition

Format

Paperback

Language

English

Pages

184 pages

Publisher

Seagull Books

Published On

2023-07-06


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