Mercury Pictures Presents

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The following is from Anthony Marra's Mercury Pictures Presents . Marra is the New York Times bestselling author of The Tsar of Love and Techno and A Constellation of Vital Phenomena , winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and longlisted for the National Book Award. Anthony Marra is a writer of boundless talent: He is a top-notch historian, a razor-sharp social critic, a deeply sensitive psychologist, and an exuberant satirist—all at the same time... A singularly pleasurable read—smart, sad, hilarious, and always full of heart. Artie may appear cynical and sleazy, but he maintains carefully hidden morals that keep him up at night. His studio becomes a haven for those driven from their homelands. (“You could map the march of fascism across Europe based on Mercury’s employment rolls.”) One of those, eventually, is Nino Picone, now known as Vincent Cortese.

Mercury Pictures Presents: A Novel: Marra, Anthony Mercury Pictures Presents: A Novel: Marra, Anthony

A dark inkling deepens to certainty. This parched patch of Utah is indeed the farthest outpost of the Third Reich, alike in the immodesty of its vision and narrowness of its humanity. Mercury Pictures Presents is a work of historical fiction set in the Italy of rising fascism between the wars. Then the action shifts to California in the late 1930s, more specifically Hollywood and the titular studio which is to become home to many in the flight from Hitler and Mussolini. While we are inside the sometimes manic everyday studio operations led by Artie Feldman, we are even closer to Maria Lagana who has traveled from a village in Italy to Hollywood with hopes, sorrows, delayed dreams, and lots of intelligence. An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.Marra’s sobering, complex debut intertwines the stories of a handful of characters at the end of the second war in bleak, apocalyptic Chechnya. Though the novel spans 11 years, the story traces five Continue reading » It turns out that 1940s Hollywood is the perfect venue to look at a multitude of historical realities. Fear of Japanese invasion. The censorship and the Red scare. The America First movement. Racism and the treatment of ‘resident aliens’. Underpaid, invisible women. Tearing down Chinatown to build the train station. Unemployed Bela Lugosi impersonating himself. Actors unable to play their own ethnicity, Maria’s Chinese lover forced to play evil Japanese soldiers. It’s a crazy world, and yet perfectly historic, and unfortunately too recognizable.

Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra book review - The

While the prose frequently sings, there are also ripely overwritten passages...The World War II Hollywood setting is colorful, but it's just a B picture. Maria Lagana leaves Italy for LA to work for Mercury Pictures working her way up to being the right hand to Artie Feldman- one half of the brother duo that owns the studio. It's 1940's in Europe and the war is looming.Just to ease the dramatic tension, though, I’ll state up front that, in the end, Marra melted my heart, and I view Mercury as a worthy addition to the author’s canon. Let’s not get carried away. But I suppose that’s the impression we want to make on these East Coast bankers. It takes a genius to know when to be taken for a fool.” So much old-time snappy wit that Mercury Pictures Presents should come with popcorn and a 78-ounce Coke.” —Ron Charles, TheWashington Post Well that was freaking stupendous. I laughed, I cried, I marveled at the illustration of man's inhumanity to man. No really, no shade, all those things happened as I read this gorgeous book. And speaking of gorgeous, the prose! Brilliant line after brilliant line. A novel so rich and wondrous . . . that there’s only one word for Anthony Marra: genius.” —Sally Mann