Global InformationList of Hollywood novels information
This is a list of Hollywood novels i.e., notable fiction about the American film and television industry and associated culture. The Hollywood novel is not to be confused with the Los Angeles novel, which is a novel set in Los Angeles and environs but not overtly about the movie business and its effect on the lives of industry participants and moviegoers. For instance, the works of Paul Beatty, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, and Aldous Huxley's Ape and Essence are Los Angeles novels but not Hollywood novels; The Oxford Companion to English Literature deems Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust a standard example of the Hollywood novel.[1]
The Hollywood novel genre dates to 1916 and is the "only American regional genre determined by a specific industry."[2] Hollywood novels portray the entertainment industry as "glitzy, powerful, and often sleazy."[3] According to the New York Society Library, "Yes, there is a part of Los Angeles called Hollywood, but the Hollywood of our imagination is so much more. It is the locus of the motion picture industry. Home to stars and producers and writers. A glamorous place. A place that is quintessentially American—where strivers and connivers can reinvent themselves and where there is always the possibility of being discovered. For better or worse, it has helped to define our country to ourselves and to the world. It is easy to see why writers have taken it up as a subject so frequently."[4]
According to author Michael Friedman in Publishers Weekly, "My informal taxonomy revealed that, as far as subject is concerned, Hollywood novels tend to fall into the following loose categories: moguls (Fitzgerald), divas (McCourt, Vidal), train wrecks (Stone, Didion), ingénues en route to stardom (Lambert), foolish dreams of being discovered (West, McCoy), and Brits who have had enough of our philistine ways and ersatz culture and return home to civilization (Waugh, Wodehouse)."[5]
| Author | Title | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Katherine Albert | Remember Valerie March | 1939 |
| Clive Barker | Coldheart Canyon | 2001 |
| Cal R. Barnes | True Grandeur | 2017 |
| William Boyd | The New Confessions | 1987 |
| Ray Bradbury | A Graveyard for Lunatics | 1990 |
| Christopher Bram | Father of Frankenstein | 1996 |
| Gwen Bristow | Tomorrow Is Forever | 1943 |
| Brock Brower | The Late Great Creature | 1971 |
| Charles Bukowski | Hollywood | 1989 |
| Edgar Rice Burroughs | The Girl from Hollywood | 1922 |
| James M. Cain | Serenade | 1937 |
| Don Carpenter | A Couple of Comedians | 1979 |
| Don Carpenter | The True Life Story of Jody McKeegan | 1975 |
| Don Carpenter | Turnaround | 1981 |
| Robert Carson | Love Affair | 1958 |
| Raymond Chandler | The Little Sister | 1949 |
| Jackie Collins | Hollywood Wives | 1983 |
| Ray Connolly | Shadows on a Wall | 1995 |
| Robert Crais | Lullaby Town | 1992 |
| Charles Dennis | The Dealmakers | 1981 |
| Joan Didion | Play It as It Lays | 1970 |
| John Gregory Dunne | True Confessions | 1977 |
| James Ellroy | The Big Nowhere | 1988 |
| James Ellroy | The Black Dahlia | 1987 |
| James Ellroy | L.A. Confidential | 1990 |
| James Ellroy | White Jazz | 1992 |
| Henry Farrell | What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? | 1960 |
| Peter Farrelly | The Comedy Writer | 1998 |
| Carrie Fisher | Postcards From the Edge | 1987 |
| Steve Fisher | I Wake Up Screaming | 1941 |
| F. Scott Fitzgerald | The Last Tycoon | 1941 |
| F. Scott Fitzgerald | The Pat Hobby Stories | 1962 |
| Paula Fox | The Western Coast | 1972 |
| Daniel Fuchs | The Golden West | 1989 |
| C.W. Gortner | Marlene | 2016 |
| Richard Grenier | The Marrakesh One-Two | 1983 |
| Doris Grumbach | The Missing Person | 1981 |
| Richard Hallas (Eric Knight) | You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up | 1938 |
| MacDonald Harris | Screenplay | 1982 |
| Alfred Hayes | My Face for the World to See | 1958 |
| Tom E. Huff | Marabelle | 1980 |
| Aldous Huxley | After Many a Summer | 1939 |
| Clive James | The Silver Castle | 1996 |
| Jay Richard Kennedy | Prince Bart | 1952 |
| Amanda Lee Koe | Delayed Rays of a Star | 2019 |
| Michael Korda | Queenie | 1985 |
| Gavin Lambert | The Goodbye People | 1971 |
| Gavin Lambert | Inside Daisy Clover | 1963 |
| Gavin Lambert | Running Time | 1982 |
| Gavin Lambert | The Slide Area | 1959 |
| Janet Leigh | The Dream Factory | 2002 |
| Janet Leigh | House of Destiny | 1995 |
| Elmore Leonard | Get Shorty | 1990 |
| Anita Loos | A Mouse is Born | 1951 |
| Anita Loos | No Mother to Guide Her | 1961 |
| Norman Mailer | The Deer Park | 1955 |
| Alan Marcus | Of Streets and Stars | 1960 |
| Armistead Maupin | Maybe the Moon | 1992 |
| James McCourt | Kaye Warfaring in "Avenged" | 1985 |
| Horace McCoy | I Should Have Stayed Home | 1938 |
| Horace McCoy | They Shoot Horses, Don't They? | 1935 |
| Larry McMurtry | Somebody's Darling | 1978 |
| Jennifer Niven | Hollywood Blonde | 2014 |
| Joyce Carol Oates | Blonde | 2000 |
| Darcy O'Brien | A Way of Life, Like Any Other | 1977 |
| John O'Hara | Hope of Heaven | 1938 |
| Stewart O'Nan | West of Sunset | 2015 |
| James Patterson | Mary, Mary | 2006 |
| Tim Powers | Medusa's Web | 2016 |
| Taylor Jenkins Reid | The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo | 2017 |
| Harold Robbins | The Carpetbaggers | 1961 |
| Harold Robbins | The Dream Merchants | 1949 |
| Theodore Roszak | Flicker | 1991 |
| Thomas Sanchez | The Zoot Suit Murders | 1978 |
| Budd Schulberg | The Disenchanted | 1950 |
| Budd Schulberg | What Makes Sammy Run? | 1941 |
| Pat Silver-Lasky | Ride The Tiger | 2010 |
| Amy Sohn | The Actress | 2014 |
| Martha Southgate | Third Girl from the Left | 2006 |
| Matthew Specktor | American Dream Machine | 2014 |
| C.K. Stead | Sister Hollywood | 1989 |
| Robert Stone | Children of Light | 1986 |
| Jacqueline Susann | Valley of the Dolls | 1966 |
| Adriana Trigiani | All the Stars in the Heavens | 2016 |
| Gore Vidal | Hollywood | 1990 |
| Peter Viertel | White Hunter Black Heart | 1953 |
| Bruce Wagner | Dead Stars | 2012 |
| Bruce Wagner | I'm Losing You | 1996 |
| Nathanael West | The Day of the Locust | 1939 |
| Harry Leon Wilson | Merton of the Movies | 1922 |
| Gary K. Wolf | Who Censored Roger Rabbit? | 1981 |
- ^ Birch, Dinah, ed. (2009). "Hollywood novel". The Oxford Companion to English Literature (7th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280687-1.
- ^ Brooker-Bowers, Nancy (1983). The Hollywood Novel: An American Literary Genre (PDF) (Thesis). Drake University.
- ^ Canfield, David; Rankin, Seija Rankin (November 7, 2022). "The most irresistible Hollywood novels". EW.com. Retrieved 2023-07-27.
- ^ "Hollywood Novels". New York Society Library. Retrieved 2023-07-27.
- ^ Friedman, Michael (June 5, 2015). "10 Best Hollywood Novels". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved 2023-07-27.