About Harry Towns
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Book Overview
Bruce Jay Friedman has been hailed by critics as a comic genius, a writer whose vision confronts the malaise of contemporary life with a liberating deadpan humor. Grove Press is proud to reissue one of the classic novels by this acclaimed master of modern humor. About Harry Towns is the story of the eponymous screenwriter, a man reveling in the freewheeling atmosphere of the early 1970s, a bicoastal playboy with a broken marriage and a child he rarely sees. But when his perfectly constructed life begins to spin out of control, he must decide to pick up the scattered pieces of his past to begin anew. Praise for About Harry Towns: "A goddamn heartbreaking delight and you are a fool if you miss it. Friedman has created a character unique, haunting, and completely memorable in stories which tickle, depress, gouge below the belt and at second or third reading hold up as nothing less than a joy." -- The Washington Post Book World
Format:Hardcover
Language:English
ISBN:039448178X
ISBN13:9780394481784
Release Date:January 1974
Publisher:Alfred A Knopf Inc
Length:180 Pages
Weight:0.97 lbs.
Customer Reviews
2 ratings
Portrait of the Artist as Aging Screenwriter
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 21 years ago
About Harry Towns is one of the funniest books I have ever read. It is also a profound look at an essentially decent, reasonably intelligent, if occasionally silly man adjusting to a world that has become a little more deranged while he has gone about the business of living. Bruce Jay Friedman manages to balance many moods - sadness, compassion, and optimism - in this very funny look at a screenwriter who wonders just how the hell he got to this strange place in his life. Read it and weep with laughter.
Screenwriter As Sensitive Thug
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 23 years ago
Harry Towns is right out of the mouth of James Brown: "I'm a Greedy Man." He is a man who can feel sympathy for a wealthy coke dealer but want to smash in the head of a someone who tries to discipline his son. Harry Towns is a New Yorker who learns to appreciate LALA Land..he is open to experiences...he is open to coke, whores, various neuroses, random acts of violence, random acts of cowardice, all the while following a strict code of rules set up for the governance of Harry Towns...in a strange way like a noble bandit in a western, Harry Towns is governed by his own set of rules, which upon this reader's reflection are just, wise, humane and if a touch selfish serve to keep the bandit sane in a world of totalitarian, brutal, evil, materialistic and vacuous Good Citizens.
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