{"id":707,"date":"2013-08-05T08:02:36","date_gmt":"2013-08-05T16:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=707"},"modified":"2013-08-05T08:02:36","modified_gmt":"2013-08-05T16:02:36","slug":"review-the-player","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/05\/review-the-player\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Player"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>
\n The Player<\/a> by Michael Tolkin<\/a>
\n My rating: 3 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

I read this one a few weeks ago, maybe a month, so this review will be sparse. I apologize. I’ve read a few other books since then, and reviewed them, and what with one thing and another, I\u2019m only getting to this review now as a disciplined approach to dividing my day into productive chunks. I\u2019m in the middle, almost exactly the middle, of another book at the moment, and I don\u2019t want to not get anything else done because I\u2019m only reading it.<\/p>\n

I saw the movie version of The Player<\/i> years ago, back in the day when people rented VCRs and a few chunky tapes and took them home for a night of popcorn and pausing to use the bathroom. Such heady stuff, this emancipation from fascist movie theater continuity. (Sorry, sorry, I tend to write a little like whatever I\u2019m currently reading. I should have written this review a long time ago). I only recently realized that it was a novel first, and written by the same person who wrote the movie. That bodes.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m wont to insist you can\u2019t expect movies or books to be the same, and I\u2019m guessing Tolkin feels the same way, because the book and movie are nothing alike. The movie is thrills and hubris and tragedy and bitter triumph. The book is much more subtle than that\u2026 it reads not unlike a kind of Less Than Zero<\/i> with movie-execs instead of teenagers and scripts instead of angst. (You thought I was going to say drugs, but I\u2019m talking about the Ellison\u2019s book, not Kanievska’s movie).<\/p>\n

And yeah, I\u2019m sure Altman\u2019s treatment of the script is the real reason the movie and the book are so different. But let\u2019s move on. The one thing I liked about The Player<\/i> is that Tolkin puts the \u201cbig plot twist\u201d right there in the beginning instead of using it to \u201cwow\u201d you at the end. It\u2019s nearly unbelievable, but then you have the rest of the novel to see how everything in Hollywood is plastic, without the novel being merely another sordid tale of jaded cynicism. This is Camus\u2019 The Stranger<\/i> told backwards, but with an upward trajectory and a few more pastels.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a quick read, too, devourable in an evening, as Tolkin’s rhythm and pacing are nice and tight. If you’ve stumbled across a trade-size paperback edition of The Player<\/i> in a used book store and wonder if your memories from 20 years ago are going to ruin the read for you, as I said: never fear. Tolkin’s style is his own, and even if it’s not a roller-coaster ride, it’s a pleasant ride nonetheless.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Player by Michael Tolkin My rating: 3 of 5 stars I read this one a few weeks ago, maybe a month, so this review will be sparse. I apologize. I’ve read a few other books since then, and reviewed them, and what with one thing and another, I\u2019m only getting to this review now … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Review: The Player”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-bp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}