The Englishman's Boy

Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. Near Fine in Very Good+ dust jacket. 1996. First Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. 0771086938 . Light edge wear to DJ. ; A bright, solid book, DJ in protective Mylar sleeve, unclipped. ; 1.3 x 9.1 x 5.6 Inches; 333 pages; "The Englishman's Boy pivots nicely between the end of the Western frontier in the late nineteenth century and the dawn of movie-making. In the 1920s, the frontier was fresh in Hollywood's memory and became a natural subject for legions of cheap silent films. In another departure from earlier work, Vanderhaeghe asks some discomforting intellectual questions. For example: To what degree must great fictional narratives, be they books or movies, sacrifice the facts in order to achieve a grander, more profound truth? Throughout The Englishman's Boy, we are also forced to question the integrity of Hollywood myths about the American and Canadian West. The Englishman's Boy is a compelling, intelligent entertainment, comprised of two separate narratives that gradually entwine and resonate in the reader's mind. In fiction number one, Harry Vincent has arrived in Hollywood from Saskatchewan and lucks into a job as a "scenarist" or writer of plot outlines at Best Chance Pictures, with the help of Rachel Gold, a Jewish, vampy screenwriter. Harry is summoned to the palatial house of the studio wonder, Damon Ira Chance, an educated madman who sees movies as the natural dynamic art form of frontier-obsessed America. Chance enlists Harry to find a Western actor and former cowboy, Shorty McAdoo. Beguiled by the power of Griffith's Birth of a Nation, he thinks McAdoo's life story will provide the material for a magisterial, Griffith-like movie of the American West." .