Big Red
A Novel Starring Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles
by Jerome Charyn
This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app
1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date 1 Dec 2022 | Archive Date 26 Sep 2022
Oldcastle Books | No Exit Press
Talking about this book? Use #BigRed #NetGalley. More hashtag tips!
Description
Narrated by a starry-eyed reporter, Big Red reimagines the tragic career of Rita Hayworth and her indomitable husband, Orson Welles.
Set amidst the noir glamour of Hollywood's Golden Age, Big Red reenvisions the life of one of America's most enduring icons: Gilda herself, Rita Hayworth, whose fiery red hair and hypnotic dancing helped make her the quintessential movie star of the 1940s. With narrator Rusty Redburn - a feisty second-string gossip columnist
from Kalamazoo tasked with spying on Hayworth by Columbia movie mogul Harry 'The Janitor' Cohn - as our guide, we follow the meteoric rise and heartrending demise of the actress, encountering her exploitative father, Eduardo; her controlling husband, 'boy genius' Orson Welles; and notorious journalist Louella Parsons, among many others. Mixing his trademark screwball comedy and unerring tragedy, Jerome Charyn, with his 'polymorphous imagination' (Jonathan Lethem) reanimates film classics such as Cover Girl, Gilda, and The Lady from Shanghai. An insightful, tender portrait of a seemingly halcyon age before blockbusters and film franchises, Big Red promises to consume both Hollywood cinephiles and neophytes alike.
Advance Praise
'Big Red is the most entertaining book I've read all year. It's as if Herman Wouk and James Ellroy had a lovechild, and that love child was given a typewriter at birth. This is a wise, hilarious, and very deep look into Hollywood's ambitions, dreams, and indulgences' - Brian Koppelman, co-creator of Billions
'Charyn's movie-love dances like a flame over every page of Big Red. Like its gloriously outspoken narrator - who never existed but should have - the book is bewitched by cinema and also hardheaded about the crass, exploitative reality of the dream factory' - Sara Imogen Smith, film critic and author of In Lonely Places
'No one writes historical fiction better than Jerome Charyn, and Big Red, his latest, narrated by the marvelously wry Rusty Redburn, is the hilarious and moving tale of a bygone Hollywood - its glamour, its stars, its moguls, its dreams, and its victims - all told with the tender wisdom of a good friend' - Brenda Wineapple, author of The Impeachers
'Charyn plausibly recreates another chapter in American history in this affecting and searing portrait of Silver Screen superstars Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles...' - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
'Jerome Charyn is one of the most important writers in American literature' - Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prizewinning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9780857305244 |
| PRICE | £9.99 (GBP) |
