Nathanael West: desire, art, and cynicism -- Budd Schulberg: unionism and sadomasochism -- Raymond Chandler: individualism and populism -- Joan Didion: gender and Lacanian tragedy -- Bruce Wagner: double consciousness and the death of desire -- Elmore Leonard: realism after the end of ideology.
Summary
Politics, Desire, and the Hollywood Novel pays close attention to six authors - Nathanael West, Raymond Chandler, Budd Schulberg, Joan Didion, Bruce Wagner, and Elmore Leonard-who have toiled in the film industry and written to tell about it. More specifically, Rhodes considers both screenplays and novels with an eye toward the different formulations of sexuality, art, and ultimately political action that exist in these two kinds of storytelling.
