Zeroville
A Novel
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
The novel that inspired the film starring James Franco and Seth Rogen: "One of a kind . . . a funny, unnervingly surreal page turner" (Newsweek).
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post Book World, Newsweek, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review
Zeroville centers on the story of Vikar, a young architecture student so enthralled with the movies that his friends call him "cinéautistic." With an intensely religious childhood behind him, and tattoos of Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift on his head, he arrives in Hollywood—where he's mistaken for a member of the Manson family and eventually scores a job as a film editor. Vikar discovers the frames of a secret film within the reels of every movie ever made, and sets about splicing them together—a task that takes on frightening theological dimensions. Electrifying and "darkly funny," Zeroville dives into the renegade American cinema of the 1970s and '80s and emerges into an era for which we have no name (Publishers Weekly).
"Funny, disturbing, daring . . . dreamlike and sometimes nightmarish." —The New York Times Book Review
"Magnificent." —The Believer
"[A] writer who has been compared to Vladimir Nabokov, Don DeLillo, and Thomas Pynchon." —Bookmarks Magazine
"Erickson is as unique and vital and pure a voice as American fiction has produced." —Jonathan Lethem
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set primarily in Los Angeles from the late 1960s through 1980s, this darkly funny, wise but flawed novel from Erickson (Arc d'X) focuses on our collective fascination with movies. Vikar Jerome, whose almost deranged film fixation manifests itself in the images of Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift tattooed on his bald head, wanders around Hollywood, where he gets mistaken for a perp in the Charles Manson murders and is robbed by a man who turns out to be a fellow film buff. After Vikar becomes a film editor, he's kidnapped by revolutionaries in Spain who want him to edit their propaganda film. Later, he wins a Cannes Film Festival award in France and receives an Oscar nomination, with strange consequences. Vikar repeatedly crosses paths with actress Soledad Palladin and her daughter, Zazi, though ambiguities in his relationship with this enigmatic pair, along with a recurring dream of his, derail this black comedy toward the end. The sudden point-of-view shift and possible supernatural element jar in an otherwise brilliant, often hilarious love song to film.
