Desert Hawk Books

 

Hollywood Fictions
The Dream Factory in American Popular Literature

John Parris Springer

 

 

336  pages
1 B&W Illustration
6" x 9"

Paperback

Quantity:   $18.95 & S/H  

Hardcover

Quantity:   $38.95 & S/H  

 

More than just a place where movies were made, Hollywood in its "golden years" was a highly charged symbolic site in America. It was a focal point for mass desires and expectations and a symbol of cultural decay and crumbling social values. The popular fiction of those decades-including novels, short stories, essays, autobiographies, fan magazines, and trade journals-portrayed the town as a place where hope and failure in American life tragically and inevitably collided.
     By elevating such themes as sin and redemption, success and failure, betrayal and loss, art and commerce, and illusion and reality to the level of cultural argument, this group of fictional works offered a popular literary forum to question fundamental American assumptions and beliefs. John Parris Springer's incisive readings of these "Hollywood fictions" trace the contradictory ways in which Hollywood was represented and analyze the conflicting images it evoked.

"Hollywood Fictions is an important contribution to both American Studies and Film Studies and is sophisticated enough in its literary analysis to appeal to English literature readers as well. It is the first serious attempt at writing a cultural history of Hollywood fiction that is informed by significant film historical research."-David A. Cook, author of A History of Narrative Film, Third Edition

"Hollywood Fictions is so good and so original. It gives equal attention not only to novels but also to short fiction. All previous books and essays on this subject have completely ignored short stories and serializations."-Anthony Slide, author of Banned in the U.S.A.: British Films in the United States and Their Censorship, 1933-1966

John Parris Springer is a lecturer in the Department of English and in the Film and Video Studies Program at the University of Oklahoma.