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’m only getting to this review now as a disciplined approach to dividing my day into productive chunks. I’m in the middle, almost exactly the middle, of another book at the moment, and I don’t want to not get anything else done because I’m only reading it.
I saw the movie version of The Player 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’m 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.
I’m wont to insist you can’t expect movies or books to be the same, and I’m 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… it reads not unlike a kind of Less Than Zero with movie-execs instead of teenagers and scripts instead of angst. (You thought I was going to say drugs, but I’m talking about the Ellison’s book, not Kanievska’s movie).
And yeah, I’m sure Altman’s treatment of the script is the real reason the movie and the book are so different. But let’s move on. The one thing I liked about The Player is that Tolkin puts the “big plot twist” right there in the beginning instead of using it to “wow” you at the end. It’s 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’ The Stranger told backwards, but with an upward trajectory and a few more pastels.
It’s 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 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.