June 29, 2021

"Tarantino has turned his most recent film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, into a novel: messing with the timeline, cranking up the backstories, mulching up reality..."

"... and alt.reality pastiche, ladling in new episodes. The result comes packaged in something like those New English Library paperbacks that used to be on carousel displays in supermarkets and drugstores. In the endpapers he cheekily includes ads for old commercial paperbacks real and imagined, such as Erich Segal’s Oliver’s Story, sequel to Love Story ('Soon to be a major motion picture').... [T]he book is entirely outrageous and addictively readable on its own terms – even the wildly prolix digressive sections and endless savant riffs about movies and TV.... He’s maybe not in the Elmore Leonard league but, like Leonard, he’s refreshingly unconcerned with the literary mainstream. I read this in one sitting – just like watching a film."

From "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood review – Tarantino’s debut novel shines/The director’s pulpy novelisation of his most recent film is entirely outrageous and addictively readable" (The Guardian). 

Here's the book, "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: A Novel." I put it in my Kindle. 

I did not — as I usually do — add the audio version of the book. I listened to the sample and was sorry to hear that the narrator is a woman with creaky voice — an unusually heavy, perhaps intentionally exaggerated creaky voice. 

Who is it? Oh, it's Jennifer Jason Leigh. Sorry, I am not amused. I am annoyed. No way I'm plugging that into my ear.

1 comment:

Ann Althouse said...

Mark writes:

This article reminded me of the paperbacks available at the gas station near my apartment in Durham.
When gas was available, I might grab one to read to clear my mind of springing and shifting uses.

Some of them were naughty, in the manner of crime comics of the late 50’s. “There she lay, in a pool of blood. Six bullet holes in her chest.”
For a 10 year-old, it was an attractive chest. And, a memorable line.