the time and space of howard hughes and his shadow

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	• I Was Howard Hughes: A Novel Steven Carter Bloomsbury USA, 2003 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 9 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Wow! Let's Laugh at Eccentric People!

Oh my gosh this book was so funny. I could not put it down. I had no idea who Howard Hughes was until I read this book. I laughed out loud so many times. It says right in front of the book that some of it is based on fact and other parts are made up - but it all felt so real and true. I believed every word because I don't know any better! I had a hard time separating it from a made up novel to a biography of an eccentric man's life - but wow what a womanizer he was. Another reason I liked this book is because it's off the wall - not mainstream. It's unique and entertaining!

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the time and space of howard hughes and his shadow

This book offers an intoxicating immersion into the world of Howard Hughes and his imaginary biographer, Alton Reece. As a former aerospace employee, I was highly interested in the details author Steven Carter wove into his tight, dazzling narrative. Anyone who has driven by the Westside and South Bay area of LA should realize what rich turf Hughes lived in, including the airplane factories that dotted and still grace the landscape (if you know where to drive). This book creates a small gem of a world that reflects the larger intellectual possibilities that Hughes once embodied, and sadly, lost along with his fiction biographer Reece.

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So Good It Hurts

This is a unique work. It would have been easy for Carter to go for cheap laughs. He doesn't. He stands aside and lets the story run. Biographer Alton Reece is everywhere. Amazingly, we do not even sense the presence of Steven Carter. Most writers can't do that.
The scenes with Hughes' body double were among the funniest I have read in a lifetime of reading. The work is brilliantly understated. Cater has literally created a literary form unlike anything seen before. How wonderful! How rare!

Beneath the humor of this work is a deep sorrow. We are all Howard Hughes on one level or another. Every damn thing is insane and Carter knows it.
I Was Howard Hughes is the most original book since A Confederacy of Dunces. It is similar to Barth's The End of the Road. It's funny as hell but will also wring you out and throw you in bed for a week. I hope it gets the audience it deserves. Carter should win the Pulitzer Prize.

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Closer to a 3.5 ...

is what I'd actually give this book. This book does not really follow the typical methods of storytelling. For starters, the narrator is a fictional biographer, but much of what the real author wrote is largely factual. In plain English it is a study in contraries. The book was relatively humorous and touching at times. Howard Hughes was an incredibly fascinating individual - the likes of which we will probably not see again in our lifetime. During my reading I kept thinking "Wow, this guy was nuts but I damn if I don't like him". I think that the author did a great job of making Hughes likable and most of all he really conveyed the magnetism that Hughes embodied. What I didn't like about this book was the narrator Mr. Reece. He was a pretty unlikable character. He came off as pompous and full of himself which I realize was supposed to be a comparison to Hughes but let's face it - Hughes is one individial who defied comparison. It's one thing to have an unlikable character and it's another to allow that character to have narrative rein. Reading this book was much like reading the diary of someone I did not like and having the content of the diary be about someone I did like. I wouldn't recommend purchasing this book. It is a better library read and for God's sake try not to read this before you have see the movie The Aviator which is out right now. I think that some of the magic that was Hughes may be lost to you at that point.

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A Heartbreaking Work That Staggers Some Geniuses

Smart, eccentric, and by turns hilarious, Carter's first novel is more compelling and accomplished than at least ninety percent of the mouthy, self-referential, post-postmodern drivel that fills the pages of McSweeney's and passes for literary "art" these days. Melding fact and fiction into one cohesive story, Carter resurrects a number of American icons--Hughes, Ava Gardner, Lana Turner, J. Edgar Hoover, Robert Kennedy, Jimmy Hoffa, Bugsy Seigel, to name a few--but without the hardboiled punchiness of James Ellroy or the mechanical syntax of Don DeLillo. In this extremely impressive debut, Carter weaves together a multiplicity of voices without missing a beat. Most impressive is Carter's ability to channel the quirkiness of both Hughes and his shady biographer without turning them into one-dimensional jokes. A timely release given the forthcoming Hughes biopic directed by Martin Scorsese. Read the book of one master storyteller (Carter, or should I say Alton Reece?), then watch the film of another!

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reviews: page 1, 2

Part Great Gatsby, part This Is Spinal Tap, Steven Carter's hilarious debut paints a fictional portrait of a biographer, his notorious subject, and the illusions we hold about fame and fortune.

Howard Hughes embodied the American dream: envied by powerful men, desired by beautiful women, Hughes lived his life larger than all who surrounded him and yet died an emaciated recluse.

This makes him the perfect subject for red-hot biographer Alton Reece. Riding high on the wave of previous astonishing successes, Reece sees Hughes as more than simply a name worth the seven-figure advance he's demanding from his publisher. He finds in Hughes a kindred spirit of greatness, a man misunderstood and beaten down by jealous inferiors. But even as Reece struggles to "know" his subject, his own rapidly unraveling life keeps finding unexpected ways to intrude.

With a deft comic touch and an astounding narrative style, Steven Carter's novel creates a picture of a Hughes that might have been, a biographer that can't separate his subject from his own visions of grandeur, and a public that demands its heroes be larger than life-if only so they can be more easily torn down.

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