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Summary
Author Notes
Jane Smiley was born in Los Angeles, California on September 26, 1949. She received a B. A. from Vassar College in 1971 and an M.F.A. and a Ph.D from the University of Iowa. From 1981 to 1996, she taught undergraduate and graduate creative writing workshops at Iowa State University. Her books include The Age of Grief, The Greenlanders, Moo, Horse Heaven, Ordinary Love and Good Will, Some Luck, and Early Warning. In 1985, she won an O. Henry Award for her short story Lily, which was published in The Atlantic Monthly. A Thousand Acres received both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Smiley (A Thousand Acres) goes Hollywood in this scintillating tale of an extended Decameron-esque L.A. house party. Gathering at the home of washed-up director Max the morning after the 2003 Academy Awards are his Iraq-obsessed girlfriend, Elena; his movie-diva ex-wife Zoe and her yoga instructor-cum-therapist-cum- boyfriend Paul; Max's insufferably PC daughter, Isabel, and his feckless agent, Stoney, who are conducting a secret affair; Zoe's oracular mother, Delphine; and Max's boyhood friend and token Republican irritant Charlie. They watch movies, negotiate their clashing diets and health regimens, indulge in a roundelay of lasciviously detailed sexual encounters and, most of all, talk-holding absurd, meandering, beguiling conversation about movies, Hollywood, relationships, the war and the state of the world. Through it all, they compulsively reimagine daily life as art: Max dreams of making My Lovemaking with Elena, an all-nude, sexually explicit indie talk-fest inspired by My Dinner with Andre, but Stoney wants him to remake the Cossack epic Taras Bulba. Smiley delivers a delightful, subtly observant sendup of Tinseltown folly, yet she treats her characters, their concern with compelling surfaces and their perpetual quest to capture reality through artifice, with warmth and seriousness. In their shallowness, she finds a kind of profundity. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Smiley has a gift for entwining eroticism with humanism and sparkling wit to form deliciously complex and slyly satirical fiction. And what opulent realms she loots: academia, horse racing, real estate, and now Hollywood. Here Smiley crafts dialogue every bit as provocative as her detailed sex scenes, and, once again, makes ingenious use of a literary antecedent, this time using as a template Boccaccio's Decameron. While Boccaccio's group of 10 women and men hope to escape the Black Death by sequestering themselves for 10 days in a villa outside Florence, Smiley quarantines her characters in a mansion high in the hills of Hollywood as the U.S. invades Iraq. Ensconced in luxury if plagued with moral quandaries, they sort out complex family and romantic relationships and argue over the war. Movie director Max, 58, has found contentment with Elena, 50, a charmingly commonsensical writer of unexpectedly intelligent how-to books, and the novel's ethical center. Then there's Elena's mischievous son; Max's socially conscious daughter; Max's ex, the supremely beautiful singer and actress Zoe; her imperial Jamaican mother; and Zoe's current lover, an annoyingly serene guru. A neighbor tells gossipy tales of old Hollywood, Max's agent pitches an unlikely project, and a friend from Max's boyhood irritates everyone. Each thorny character has an intriguing backstory, feelings run high, and Smiley is regally omnipotent as she advocates for art, objects to war, and considers tricky questions of power and spirit, love and compassion. Archly sexy and brilliant. --Donna Seaman Copyright 2006 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
IN everyday talk, storytelling is ubiquitous: "You'll never believe what happened to me today. ..." "I'll never forget the time when. ..." "Did you hear the one about ...?" When in doubt - or at loose ends or in need of attention - we narrate. I have only anecdotal evidence to support this hunch, but it seems to me that this conversational propensity to share stories is somewhat neglected by novelists. More often than not, characters in fiction are inclined to get right to the point, to speak their minds, to engage in verbal exposition. Their authors, perhaps reluctant to share the prerogatives of plot-making with imaginary beings, tend not to indulge the digressive impulses that, in the world beyond the page, consume so much time and breath. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, though few are quite so prodigious as Jane Smiley's new novel, "Ten Days in the Hills." And none that I can think of illustrate so richly why the rule exists in the first place. How many times have you stood and smiled as someone recounted a dream, the plot of a movie, a childhood memory or a funny incident at work - all things the chatty men and women who inhabit this novel do with some frequency. Chances are that you listen out of a certain sense of obligation. This is your spouse, your friend, your client, your grandmother, and it would be rude to give voice to the boredom that, most of the time - be honest - haunts you. One reason we have professional novelists is that tales told by amateurs are frequently pointless, dull and inconclusive. Jane Smiley is a justly esteemed professional whose narratives are paragons of well-applied craft. Proof that she has also thought seriously about the technical challenges and historical development of her vocation can be found in "Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel," one of the livelier recent books of criticism by a practicing fiction writer. And like "A Thousand Acres," still her best-known novel (though far from her best), "Ten Days in the Hills" wears its literary pedigree on its sleeve. In the earlier book, "King Lear" was adduced to a tale of Midwestern family dysfunction, the Shakespearean plot functioning mainly as a decorative element to assure consumers (and prize-giving juries) that this was not run-of-the-mill dirty realism but bona fide literature. And so, in "Ten Days in the Hills," we have not just the potentially diverting spectacle of 10 residents and sojourners in the city of Los Angeles engaging in promiscuous verbal intercourse, punctuated by bouts of the other kind, but also a modern recasting of "The Decameron." In that book, 10 privileged Florentines - seven women and three men - took refuge from their plague-ravaged city in the accursed year 1348 and passed the time telling stories, a hundred in all. In Smiley's version, the genders are brought into parity and the catastrophe is the war in Iraq. The novel begins on the morning of March 24, 2003, the Monday after the Academy Awards, an event shadowed by tension and anxiety and overshadowed, to some degree, by the start of the war the previous week. Max and Elena, a middle-aged couple, wake up in Max's bedroom, and the afterglow of the previous evening is marred by thoughts of faraway violence and intimations of geopolitical and ideological uncertainty. Over the next 10 days, Elena's sense of political impotence will occasionally be juxtaposed with Max's more literal variety. At the start, in any case, their sweet, affectionate talk sets a promising tone for the pages to come. These are comfortable, articulate, nice people, and you don't mind being in their company. He is a movie director (also a Vietnam veteran) who hasn't worked much lately, though he did win an Oscar some years back. She is a Midwesterner, a single mother, and the author of a series of popular how-to and self-help books. Their conversation is relaxed and easy, but they're at an early enough stage in their relationship and an advanced enough stage in life - Max is 58; Elena is 50 - not to take the consolations of intimacy for granted. Before long, though, the quiet of Max's mansion is broken by the arrival of the rest of the ensemble: Max's daughter, Isabel, a 23-year-old with all the correct postmodern postgraduate attitudes; his ex-wife, Zoe Cunningham, a "pop icon and sex goddess" whose mother, Delphine, shows up with a neighbor named Cassie. Zoe is currently attached to Paul, who is also her guru, or healer, or something. Isabel, meanwhile, is continuing the clandestine affair she began as a teenager with Stoney, the 37-year-old son of Max's longtime agent, who has recently died, leaving his son to fill his old-school Hollywood shoes. Rounding out the ménage are Charlie, a childhood friend of Max's whose hawkish views on the war drive Elena crazy, and Elena's 20-year-old son, Simon, a college student with a healthy sexual appetite. So far so good. These are interesting people too. In the early chapters of "Ten Days in the Hills," a crowded, knowing comedy of contemporary manners seems to be taking shape. Tensions flicker within the various pairings, and an intimation of satire seems to be part of the furniture. Spiritual healers, aging actresses, agents, Hollywood liberals and vacationing conservatives, self-righteous vegetarians and self-indugent slackers, three generations, all with time on their hands, sex on their brains and stories to tell - how could this fail to be, at the very least, wickedly entertaining? But fail it does. The absence of plot Smiley's refusal to arrange incidents into a pattern or to gratify a readerly desire for suspense or continuity - is hardly an accident. Boccaccio's "Decameron" belongs to the prehistory of the novel, and part of its fascination for modern readers (Smiley among them, I suspect) lies in its apparent freedom from the expectations of psychological perspective and formal coherence that are the novel's default settings. The shapelessness of "Ten Days in the Hills" is the result of a potentially interesting experiment in literary anachronism. What would it look like to bring an archaic, exotic model of storytelling into contact with the particulars of contemporary American life? In this case, it looks like a very long dinner party, at which the reader is more an interloper than an invited guest. After a while, the action - the talk, for the most part - shifts from Max's house to a far more lavish property on the other side of the 405 freeway. Stoney is trying to persuade Max to direct a new screen adaptation of "Taras Bulba," Gogol's novella about Ukrainian Cossacks (and another example of a work in which modern and ancient sensibilities collide). The main backer of the project is a mysterious Russian called Mike, and it is to his mansion, with its sexually compliant staff, its Edenic grounds and its extravagantly decorated themed rooms, that the 10 talkers repair when they need a change of scene. There Delphine recounts the plot of "The Seventh Seal," as earlier Max had summarized "Taras Bulba." (There are also sketches of fictitious or speculative movies, including one in which Jennifer Lopez plays an American soldier in Iraq.) Cassie explains her pet conspiracy theory about the Council on Foreign Relations. Charlie recalls the recent breakup of his marriage. Zoe and Isabel squabble. None of these odds and ends is intrinsically uninteresting. But in the slack rhythms of idle chitchat, they aren't terribly memorable either, and they don't add up to much. Once introduced, the characters start to fade, and their conflicts and entanglements aren't especially funny or revealing. Max may be a fine filmmaker, Stoney a competent agent, and Zoe a dynamite actress, but for them storytelling is, as it is for most of us, a slack, easy pastime. What they need is a writer. A.O. Scott is a film critic for The Times. He is writing a book about the American novel since World War II.
Guardian Review
Imagine an extended episode of Newsnight Review in which, after some elevated and vaguely competitive conversation about the sustainability of modern Iranian cinema, Mark and Germaine get their kits off and have a long, slightly technical on-screen shag (I know, and I'm sorry). When they're done, they get dressed again and start discussing anti-semitic undercurrents in classical Russian literature, while Bonnie gets it on with Tony in the background. If you find this thought appealing, you'll love Jane Smiley's new novel. The book describes 10 lazy days in the mansion of Oscar-winning (but slightly past it) writer-director Max, with his present wife, his ex-wife, their child, her child, his agent and . . . well, 10 attractive people ranging in age from 20 to 58. The publisher's bumf says it's a modern Decameron . Smiley often uses classical sources to mine the modern world. A Thousand Acres , for instance, is a version of King Lear which is also a vivid recreation of life on a farm in Iowa. But in the Decameron you have a strong sense that the plague is raging outside the villa walls and the characters are telling stories to hide from their own mortality. Here the plague is replaced by the war in Iraq (the book opens five days after the invasion begins), and you can't help but reflect that the danger this time is 7,000 miles away. The war interferes with poor Max's sex life - so it did achieve some good after all. With its big cast, brilliant conversation, atmosphere of privilege and multiplying stories, the book feels less like the Decameron than A Midsummer Night's Dream or La regle du jeu . Los Angeles is often described as a thousand suburbs in search of a city. Ten Days is true to that spirit - it's a thousand subplots in search of a story. Stories are for people who believe in consequences. These privileged, healthy people live lives of fabulous inconsequence. They get divorced but stay friends. They do drugs but recover their health. They live like Borges' Immortals - able to experience everything except the painful joy of choosing one thing to the exclusion of all others. Smiley brilliantly skewers this mentality. Only a writer with her technical virtuosity could dare to write a book in which nothing is more important than anything else. Jackie Mason once objected to the sex scene in a movie and was told, "But Jackie, sex is very important. Everyone does it", to which he replied, "Everyone drinks soup. Where's the soup scene?" Well, there are plenty of soup scenes here. Food is described in the painstaking - and often hilarious - detail that you only find in LA restaurant menus. There's a very funny moment when the host begins preparing a meal by taking an inventory of the vegetarians, vegans, the lactose- intolerants, those on low-fat diets and the spice-averse. In most books about movies, the "creatives" are falling apart but holding on to some dream of a great, unmakable movie. In Steve Tesich's brilliant Karoo , for instance, the messed-up hero wants to make a space-opera version of The Odyssey . It sounds daft, but the book - in an amazing coup - ends with Karoo's soaringly beautiful pitch for it. I don't know about the rest of the country, but Karoo seems to be something of a cult among brainy Liverpool teenage boys. Max's dream couldn't be more different. It's a movie about his sex life with Elena - a duff middle-aged vanity project like 9 Songs or The Brown Bunny . His agent warns him against it, saying "you want to make a movie about an unmarried couple talking about the Iraq war and making love, with graphic sex? You know better, so this must be a joke. It has every single thing that Hollywood producers hate and despise, and that American audiences hate and despise - fornication, old people, current events and conversation." It's also a description of the book. It's a testament to Smiley's skill that she makes such an unappealing project delightfully readable. But its ultimate message - that despite all his success and good fortune, Max is probably a bit rubbish - is the opposite of Tesich's. Despite all his problems and failings, Karoo still carries within himself the illimitable possibilities of humanity. "He didn't know what course he was on. But he knew now he was not lost." Ten Days in the Hills is a beguiling, impressive read, rippling with incidental pleasures. But I doubt I'll ever see a pale, intense sixthformer gripping his battered copy on the Merseyrail. Frank Cottrell Boyce's Framed is published by Macmillan. To order Ten Days in the Hills for pounds 14.99 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875 or go to guardian.co.uk/ bookshop Los Angeles . . . a thousand suburbs in search of a city Caption: article-smiley.1 The book describes 10 lazy days in the mansion of Oscar-winning (but slightly past it) writer-director Max, with his present wife, his ex-wife, their child, her child, his agent and . . . well, 10 attractive people ranging in age from 20 to 58. The publisher's bumf says it's a modern Decameron . [Jane Smiley] often uses classical sources to mine the modern world. A Thousand Acres , for instance, is a version of King Lear which is also a vivid recreation of life on a farm in Iowa. But in the Decameron you have a strong sense that the plague is raging outside the villa walls and the characters are telling stories to hide from their own mortality. Here the plague is replaced by the war in Iraq (the book opens five days after the invasion begins), and you can't help but reflect that the danger this time is 7,000 miles away. The war interferes with poor Max's sex life - so it did achieve some good after all. With its big cast, brilliant conversation, atmosphere of privilege and multiplying stories, the book feels less like the Decameron than A Midsummer Night's Dream or La regle du jeu . Los Angeles is often described as a thousand suburbs in search of a city. Ten Days is true to that spirit - it's a thousand subplots in search of a story. - Cottrell Boyce.
Kirkus Review
Smiley, who won a Pulitzer for transplanting King Lear to 1970s Iowa (A Thousand Acres, 1991), sets her modern-day version of The Decameron in Hollywood. And it's no prize-winner. Her characters are not drawn together by a disaster as directly threatening as the Black Death, though the recently launched invasion of Iraq inspires nearly as much dread in one of them. Self-help author Elena can't help brooding about the war, even as she lies in bed kissing her lover, slightly-past-his-prime film director Max. It's March 24, 2003, the morning after the Oscars, and Max's house is filled with guests: insecure Stoney, who inherited the job of Max's agent from his more dynamic father; belligerently patriotic Charlie, Max's childhood friend; Delphine, who's still living in Max's guest house years after his divorce from her daughter, gorgeous movie star Zoe; Delphine's best friend Cassie; Max and Zoe's daughter Isabel; and Elena's feckless son Simon. In wander Zoe and her new lover Paul, a New Age-y healer, and the stage is set for ten days of storytelling à la Boccaccio. Unsurprisingly, many of the tales involve movies and moviemaking, though Smiley nods to her source material a few times (e.g., a notorious sinner declared a saint after a mendacious deathbed confession). If only her narrative were as lively as the bawdy Decameron: There's plenty of sex, but most of it is clinical rather than erotic, and the erectile difficulties of middle-aged men don't make for very arousing reading either. The parade of stories has no evident thematic unity, and the characters are frequently irritating. Even those who agree with Elena's feelings about Iraq may grow tired of her harping on the subject, and Isabel's perennially aggrieved stance toward her mother hardly seems justified by Zoe's mildly diva-esque behavior. A change of venue to a lavish mansion owned by a mysterious Russian who wants Max to direct a remake of Taras Bulba helps not at all. A couple of touching moments toward the end can't redeem this surprising misstep from one of our most gifted novelists. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Following the 2003 Academy Awards, guests of legendary (but fading) writer/director Max and his lover, Elena, gossip, swim, couple, and enjoy movies in true Hollywood style. With an eight-city tour. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
