{"product_id":"9780743243384","title":"Still Holding","description":"\u003cstrong\u003eStill Holding\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor(s): Bruce Wagner\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBruce Wagner has been hailed for his powerful prose, his Swiftian satire, and the scalpel-sharp wit that has, in each of his novels, dissected and sometimes disemboweled Hollywood excess.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e In his most ambitious book to date, \u003ci\u003eStill Holding,\u003c\/i\u003e Wagner immerses readers in post-September 11 Hollywood, revealing as much rabid ambition, rampant narcissism, and unchecked mental illness as ever. He infiltrates the gilded life of a superstar actor\/sex symbol\/practicing Buddhist, the compromised world of a young actress whose big break comes when she's hired to play a corpse on \u003ci\u003eSix Feet Under,\u003c\/i\u003e and the strange parallel universe of look-alikes -- an entire industry in which struggling actors are hired out for parties and conventions to play their famous counterparts. Alternately hilarious and heartfelt, ferocious and empathetic, \u003ci\u003eStill Holding\u003c\/i\u003e is Bruce Wagner's most expertly calibrated work.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReview(s):\u003cbr\u003eJames Ellroy \u003ci\u003eStill Holding\u003c\/i\u003e is Bruce Wagner's masterpiece.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e What Wagner does, nobody does better. He is the Nathanael West, the Budd Schulberg of our time, the go-to guy for closely observed novels about a sun-soaked hellhole that may or may not be a real place.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\"Still Holding\u003c\/i\u003e finds the Nabakov of New Age Angeleno life in the best form of his career - which is saying something...Probably because of the ghettoization of the Hollywood novel, Wager has never received the Franzen-like critical adulation that he deserves. Then again, he has never particularly sought celebrity; he has simply made it his own territory, with as much genius and ferocity as Faulkner applied to laying bare the gloriously unsavory humanity of Yoknapatawpha County.\" \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e -- \u003ci\u003eElle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Wagner's ability to limn the mercurial ways of Hollywood is astonishing, and he...writes with a fiery grace...A brutal phantasmagoria on the pleasures and perils of the dream factory.\" \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e -- \u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Wagner has the ...marvelous ability to be resolutely kind and unsparingly cutting at the same time, a contradiction played out hilariously in \u003ci\u003e[Still Holding].\"\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e -- \u003ci\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[A] scathing, keenly observed tragicomedy of manners.\" \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e -- \u003ci\u003eW Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The effect is like a Buddhist El Greco, a coil of figures spiraling awkwardly heavenward against a garish backdrop...But it's a gorgeous freak show, and part of the pleasure is that Wagner seems to be having so much fun.\" \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e -- \u003ci\u003eNew York Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Bruce Wagner writes comedies of manners...and they're caustic enough to take the paint off walls, which is why they're so memorable...\u003ci\u003e[Still Holding]\u003c\/i\u003e is just sardonic enough to be hilarious and just serious enough to be scary.\" \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e -- Janet Maslin on CBS-TV \"Sunday Morning\"\u003cbr\u003e\"Bruce Wagner is a moralist whose misfortune it is to have as his subject the self-crazed, affect free, excess-addicted world capital of amorality, Hollywood. His hard luck is our good fortune. In blazing, high-speed prose he tears into his subject with a taboo-breaking savage rage disguised as wild comedy. He is a visionary posing as a farceur.\" \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e -- Salman Rushdie\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\"Still Holding\u003c\/i\u003e is Bruce Wagner's masterpiece. It's the place where his razor-eyed contempt melts, and he extends to his Hollywood doomed and damned a horrible empathy and pity. It's a primer and a Baedeker of the corruption of media and the human cost of playing game. This book contains miracles of wit, laughter and social commentary. It's a Hollywood novel that embraces everyone who has ever wanted to be someone else. Wagner's heart and energy abound.\" \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e --James Ellroy\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eISBN:  9780743243384\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e ","brand":"Simon \u0026 Schuster","offers":[{"title":"Paperback \/ softback","offer_id":40590869725390,"sku":"9780743243384","price":22.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0600\/7029\/7806\/products\/O_e1226d52-d20e-4b89-849c-0f43d386db5b.jpg?v=1637744318","url":"https:\/\/pickwickbookshop.com\/products\/9780743243384","provider":"Pickwick Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}