- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: Grove Press (Nov 20 2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0802138756
- ISBN-13: 978-0802138750
- Product Dimensions: 21 x 14 x 1.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 272 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
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First Sentence
Closing in on age forty and rattled a bit by a recent divorce, Paul Gurney decided to quit his job and try for a completely new start in life. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
Closing in on age forty and rattled a bit by a recent divorce, Paul Gurney decided to quit his job and try for a completely new start in life. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Where's the cd?,
By booknblueslady (Woodland, CA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Violencia!: A Musical Novel (Paperback)
Paul Gurney, Bruce Jay Friedman's protagonist in his comic novel Violencia, torn by his recent divorce and suffering from a mid-life crisis of sorts quits his day job as clerk for the New York Homicide department and editor of a homicide newsletter. While adrift in his search for himself and a new job, Paul is recruited to write a musical play about a homicide department. Norman Welles, a composer who has read Gurney's newsletter feels he will be the perfect author of such a play. Gurney lets himself be convinced and he is off on his quest for fame and fortune along Broadway.Gurney who is a novice, fits easily into the role of although he is rudderless and easily mislead. He quickly finds himself surrounded by strange and interesting characters, and quite at home with them. There is Norman Welles a composer who seems to think that an opening number for a homicide movie should be a light romantic number which is about Paris in the off-season. Gurney's personal hero is director Clement Hartog who comes with the extra baggage of a mother who must be in each of his plays. Essie Hartog, Clement's mother an aging star who performs all of her roles on stilts will play the detective bureau chief. Then there is the unlucky producer Undertag who has never had a successful Broadway play. It makes perfect sense that Gurney will fit right in with them. The descriptions of the behind the scenes work on the play are intriguing. Of special interest is the passages about the songs which Welles had ineptly prepared for the musical. Odd scenes as restaurant odors offending playgoers, dancers on stilts and telegrams from the dead add to the humor of the novel. Friedman has a talent for creating strange characters, and amusing situations while providing commentary on philosophy and life. Paul Gurney, who begins working on the play directionless and insecure seems to gain perspective and confidence working on a project which seems doomed from the start. This is not a novel of great depth nor was it meant to be. It certainly is an amusing way to spend an afternoon. I have only one question, where is the CD?
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews) 4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Where's the cd?,
By booknblueslady - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Violencia!: A Musical Novel (Paperback)
Paul Gurney, Bruce Jay Friedman's protagonist in his comic novel Violencia, torn by his recent divorce and suffering from a mid-life crisis of sorts quits his day job as clerk for the New York Homicide department and editor of a homicide newsletter. While adrift in his search for himself and a new job, Paul is recruited to write a musical play about a homicide department. Norman Welles, a composer who has read Gurney's newsletter feels he will be the perfect author of such a play. Gurney lets himself be convinced and he is off on his quest for fame and fortune along Broadway.Gurney who is a novice, fits easily into the role of although he is rudderless and easily mislead. He quickly finds himself surrounded by strange and interesting characters, and quite at home with them. There is Norman Welles a composer who seems to think that an opening number for a homicide movie should be a light romantic number which is about Paris in the off-season. Gurney's personal hero is director Clement Hartog who comes with the extra baggage of a mother who must be in each of his plays. Essie Hartog, Clement's mother an aging star who performs all of her roles on stilts will play the detective bureau chief. Then there is the unlucky producer Undertag who has never had a successful Broadway play. It makes perfect sense that Gurney will fit right in with them. The descriptions of the behind the scenes work on the play are intriguing. Of special interest is the passages about the songs which Welles had ineptly prepared for the musical. Odd scenes as restaurant odors offending playgoers, dancers on stilts and telegrams from the dead add to the humor of the novel. Friedman has a talent for creating strange characters, and amusing situations while providing commentary on philosophy and life. Paul Gurney, who begins working on the play directionless and insecure seems to gain perspective and confidence working on a project which seems doomed from the start. This is not a novel of great depth nor was it meant to be. It certainly is an amusing way to spend an afternoon. I have only one question, where is the CD?
2.0 out of 5 stars
Violence is Golden,
By R F Brown - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Violencia!: A Musical Novel (Paperback)
I'm not sure if I'm supposed to know the author Bruce Jay Friedman. Friedman, now in his 80s, over decades has written a bunch of novels I never read, some off-broadway plays I never heard of, and the screenplays for movies made in the 1980s I couldn't care less about, e.g. Stir Crazy, Doctor Detroit, Splash. If Friedman is a famous author I gather it's because he's supposed to be a master wit in hysterical fiction. Hysterical is a pretty good word for describing the mania of Violencia! A retired police precinct clerk is recruited to write the libretto for Violencia!, a Broadway musical based on gritty experiences observed in the crime fighting world. Despite knowing nothing about writing a musical and being a rather ordinary man, the clerk unwittingly becomes a swiveling node for the novel's cast of neurotic producers, composers and theatre actors. They all see the dull clerk as an embassy for their vanities, character flaws, and harebrained ideas about art and audience. Violencia! follows the attempt to put on a big musical from it's distasteful concept, to dishonest financing scheme, to pointless and vulgar production numbers, and then to calamitous road tryouts. The novel is intended as a satire on the affectations of backstage Broadway. Situations and characters in this book are clever I have to admit, but satirical comedy like this too often proceeds plausibility: the fatigued composer returns energized after vacationing in less than a day's travel from New York to PuertaVallarta, no-nothing producers with hundreds-thousands of dollars at stake insist that Violencia!'s success is held in suspense by the script's call for use of the word "doody." This style of writing allows for comical leaps in logic and abandoned story detail. Friedman's novel is creative but I also find the storytelling a little lazy considering it's something he's been doing for decades. This may be a good light read for someone in the mood for lampoonery; I take my comedy much more serious.
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