The Golden West by Daniel Fuchs – Black Sparrow Hollywood Stories John Updike Introduction!

Description

Daniel Fuchs, originally from New York, transitioned to Los Angeles in his mid-20s to pursue a career in screenwriting. Over the years, he collaborated with notable directors such as Vincent Sherman, Raoul Walsh, and Elia Kazan. Beyond his screenplays, Fuchs contributed essays and stories to publications like The New Yorker, providing candid reflections on his experiences in Hollywood.

This anthology brings together Fuchs’s insightful essays and fictional pieces that delve into the intricacies of Hollywood life, offering readers a nuanced portrayal of the film industry’s golden era.

Critics have praised Fuchs’s work for its authenticity and depth. Irving Howe, writing for The New York Review of Books, remarked that The Golden West is “first-rate, worth placing beside Fitzgerald’s and West’s evocations of the Hollywood frenzy—that lunatic desperation that keeps these people, their hearts eaten away by success and memory, clinging to the slopes to avoid falling into bankruptcy yet still dreaming that, with a yank here, a twist there, they’ll again make a cool million.” The book also features an introduction by John Updike, who admired Fuchs’s precision, restraint, and the quietly radiant intelligence beneath his prose.