Welcome to Litsy!

When a 464-page mockumentary novel goes off the rails before the end of Chapter 1, where can it go from there? When its subject is Hollywood excess in the 1970s and 80s, having no limits when it comes to violence, sex, and general lack of decency, works surprisingly well. This novel mirrors the horrendous B-movies that its controversial filmmaker subject produces, and even when the films get better, it's still Mommie Dearest behind the scenes 👇

@Reggie
Such a great gag 😅

Thanks to @Reggie for the recommendation and @Centique for the book! Brash, gleefully offensive, & ruthlessly satirical, JRB skewers Hollywood as only a passionate cinema lover can do. The worst excesses & abuses are depicted w/black humor, the characters are caricatures, & Shark‘s movies reach a fever pitch of kitsch. It‘s a funny, deranged, breakneck story that distinctly evokes the films/culture of the 50s-80s. Wild! Such fun.

I will never forget that drive into town. It was sunset, one of those painfully beautiful sunsets when the sky seems to stay orange forever, and you feel that you somehow understand what California is all about.

This is probably the 4th or 5th time I‘ve reread this book. I think it hurts a little this time because the pace of the world has changed so much I almost felt overwhelmed by the brilliantly connected billions of things that happen in here. However, this will always be my favorite book. I 1st read it at a fondly remembered time in my life. The writing and story were so far out from anything I had read before. It blew my mind then and still 👇🏼

“Filmmaking is an odd thing. No matter what sort of ugly crap happens during production, once a movie comes out, if it‘s good and a hit, everything is forgotten.”

Or, as the book jacket says more pointedly: at the “pinnacle of Hollywood power anything is forgiven as long as it makes money.”

Insane!! This story is deranged. And what a monster Shark is turning out to be, huh? @Reggie & @vivastory

Everyone knows the girl Shark brings to Cannes is way underage but all that concerns them is if the publicity will taint the release of their film. The men predictably call her a Lolita and no one sees her as anything other than a sexual substitute for Kathy Petro.

But JRB lets us hear from her. She‘s a curious teenager, bored, and ultimately lonely. I love that the chapter ends with Cindi recounting her dismal return home.

@Reggie @vivastory

So look what just arrived, new books!!!! Are they from you @Reggie ? I know the tagged book is one of your favourites! Well whoever it is THANKYOU! The universe always seems to deliver when you need it most. Thanks for making me feel warm and fuzzy and reminding me how fantastic Litsy is! ❤️

Not even these two can distract me from this book!

I just wanted to say that even in all the craziness of Blonde on Blonde he still gives us this nugget of beauty, lol. Then we‘re in East of Eden, in college, living in James Dean‘s old house. Back on speed making a movie paid for by dealings with the anti war underground of the day. So much to just be crushed by the man whose films you respect the most. I don‘t think I‘ve really appreciated how much of the era he put into these chapters.

WHAT A TRIP. I am actually laughing aloud as I read this chapter (Blonde on Blonde), @Reggie & @vivastory . Acid trips and chainsaws (not a good mix), Tijuana sex shows, insidious chemical plants, a serial killer (!), and MAC TRAGER. Oh man. This is a lot of fun.

The US during the 1950s distilled into 20 wild pages: McCarthyism; the A-Bomb; UFOs, & (not so well) repressed sexuality. Suburban family life revolves around tv & as a result everyone is described by how close or far off they resemble movie stars: Gloria Grahame, Glenn Ford, & Lucille Ball appear as suburban grotesques.

@Reggie & @vivastory The format of overlapping voices is giving me Lincoln in the Bardo vibes, have you all read that?

#BoyWonderBuddyRead Yeah, so like the big nerd I am I had a smile on my face through the whole first 30 pages. Lol I forgot how fun this book was and how much happens. We have babies being born at a drive-in, a John Wayne cameo, racist, toxic masculine dads, twins suspiciously drowning, bad trips to Disneyland, mentally ill mothers who put themselves in freezers. There‘s a reason I describe this book as literary cocaine to people. #cocainelit

Thanks for the tag @Bookzombie
1. New Mexico
2. Boy Wonder by James Robert Baker
3. Harry Potter (I don‘t really do series since I got burned by Patricia Cornwall and Jo Nesbo) lol
4.Monsoon Wedding. Volver. All About My Mother.
5. Don‘t really watch TV but I‘ll say American Horror Story.
6. Black women who sing about heartache. Favorite song - Just say I love him-Nina Simone.
7. Blue.
8. Horror
9. Casino
10. No

@Reggie I am very excited to read Boy Wonder - thanks so much for doing this giveaway! I'll tag you in my review. The one annoying thing about reading is how few other people we know have read our favorites, which is why I'm thankful for spaces like Litsy.
Thanks too for the card and note: that artwork is amazing! I've been getting into birding lately - I like the idea of providing them with some nice perches, lol.

What a great pick me up I received today! And all the way from New Zealand!! Thank you so much @Centique ! I am looking forward to reading it. 😊😊😊

Winners because @Centique was kind enough to say to pick 2 winners and she would send her copy to the second name picked. Congratulations to @Billypar and @GhostStories on winning the books. Please send your addresses to reglara79@yahoo.com BillyPar, you will get mine, and, GhostStories, your copy will be on its way from NZ. Thanks to everyone who entered!

My favorite book in the whole world has been brought back from obscurity and been republished. These are all the posts I have made about this book and the only other two people who have posted about this book are ones that I have given copies to, lol. James Robert Baker was brilliant, biting, and wrote with his two middle fingers out. He was gay and committed suicide in 1997. In celebration of Pride month, I just ordered 2 copies and want to 👇🏼

This book is one hell of a ride! Thank you so much @Reggie it‘s completely different to everything I‘ve been reading and it washed my brain clean - with a flamethrower! 😂😂 I loved it. The whole thing is told like a documentary - interviews with people remembering Shark Trager - a Hollywood enfant terrible. It‘s a satire sending up the worst excesses of Hollywood in the 60s-70s-80s but with real heart and pain. ⬇️

I‘m up to Chapter 8 @Reggie and it‘s blowing my mind! So many 60s news and cultural references, it‘s like Shark is the lightning rod that caused everything to happen. Crazy $&£€ goes down in crayola bright colours, how can it be so attractive and repellent at the same time? Like I‘m kind of in awe of what happened to the guy taking acid for the first time ????

Not one but two books by James Robert Baker found their way all across the world to me. Thank you so much @Reggie for this ‘literary cocaïne‘ ??! I am looking forward to it and will spread the word afterwards and send Baker on his way! ?

Wow. This book is unforgettable! It‘s a roller coaster ride. Definitely not for the faint-hearted (several triggers, un-PC, drug use, etc), but the author kept this satire on Hollywood constantly moving along; it‘s one thing after another!! It‘s like going 160mph in Shark‘s Porsche during the entire time of reading. Thanks @Reggie for including this in your giveaway package! I‘m still thinking about all the craziness in this book!

Oscar night! I‘ll be reading this wild satire of Movie-making during the commercials. About 100 pages left.!

Shark, the MC, obsesses over and stalks Kathy over the years. Here‘s she‘s wearing nothing but her glasses and reading Listen to the Warm by Rod McKuen when Shark resurfaces once again in her life. So I pulled my copy (bought used many years ago) off the shelf and there‘s a paper w/ a LA return address in it! Weird because Boy Wonder takes place in LA and the author was from there. P.S. McKuen rates a so-so from me.

Staying close to home today. Boy Wonder is a good read for this Nor‘easter weather! Read one or two pages, then glance up to see if any of our trees are standing (lots of branches breaking tho), repeat. Let‘s hope the power stays on so I can keep reading. This novel keeps happening 😄!! @Reggie can you tell where I‘m at now?

Looking forward to seeing where all this is going!! How did James Robert Baker come up with all this stuff?! And I‘m only on Chapter 3.

@Reggie

#NuYear So this scene puts the “Going to Hell” stamp on Shark‘s #moral character. He put Kathy in the role of Winnie in his latest movie Home to the Heart. In this scene, her character, confined to a wheelchair by spine cancer, turns to look outside at the pool where her twins are suddenly thrashing around, drowning. As she reaches for the phone to call for help, she falls out of the chair effectively ripping the cord from the wall. Kathy was 👇🏼

#NuYear #replicas Because Kathy Petro wants nothing to do with Shark at this time in their lives, he scours all of the nation‘s Kathy Petro look alike contests for their winners.

#NuYear #Idieyoudie So after a horrible debacle of his last movie, Red Surf, where he causes several psychotic breaks making a movie about a childhood friend who, after he went to go see Psycho with one too many times, that childhood friend grows up to be a serial killer. He uses that friend in the movie. After the disaster, Shark is ruined and homeless and abandoned by friends. He gets a job as a projectionist at a theater where he also👇🏼

Almost all of the chapters in Boy Wonder are named for #films that influenced him or ones that he made. #NuYear

After his unhappy early childhood, Shark becomes obese, which does not sit well with his red-blooded, Republican, “no son of mine is going to be a fat slob,” father. He sends Shark to a doctor who prescribes diet pills, that at that time nobody knew was speed. Shark loses the weight, gains muscle, and starts to fixate on certain things. One is Kathy Petro, the girl in his life, seen here while Shark is much more than a casual #observer. #NuYear

After Shark‘s mother put herself into the freezer on Christmas Day, after Gladys, the nurse who Shark‘s father was having an affair with is shamed out of the neighborhood, Mac, Shark‘s father, married Evelyn, a real bigoted nightmare of a stepmother. Here is her #berserker exit. #NuYear.

Because I love Robert James Baker and this #NuYear challenge has stirred up sadness knowing that his books are out of print, I wrote an e-mail to this independent publisher, Valancourt Books, this morning. They specialize in rediscovering out of print gay fiction and horror. The reason I had even heard of them was because of a tag on Litsy. This was the same day response which was so nice. Cross your fingers!!!

After his mother falls into depression, after the same aged twins down the street are found mysteriously drowned, after his father moves in the woman he is having a blatant affair with to nurse his barely there mother, a young Shark wets his pants after an air raid drill at school. When his father finds out, Shark, knowing he is to be spanked, runs away to a field where he is found #prayingtothealiens. This is barely pg 15. #NuYear

At the beginning of this book, a retelling of the late, mad genius filmmaker, Shark Trager‘s life told in interviews of everyone who knew him, it comes as no surprise that he was born amongst the #cars at a drive-in movie theatre. #nuyear

It was 2007, I was living in Las Cruces, leaving my shitty$315/month apartment( which is still my favorite place I have ever lived) to walk down the street to a hole in the wall, Mexican restaurant (there is a salsa stain on one of the pages) to read what would become my favorite book in the whole world. I remember telling a girl at work,”On pg.6, the mother froze herself to death in a freezer on X-mas morning.” It was wild.#feelslikethefirsttime

#cult5 Thanks @Centique @sprainedbrain and @Balibee146 for the tag. These James Robert Baker and Chuck Palahniuk books are my top 5 cult favorites. I spent a lot of time with an open jaw,having my mind and sense of reality stretched, while reading these. Not your GrandMaMa‘s fiction. Lol

My #UmaThurman pick would be Boy Wonder because I think if Quentin Tarantino ever made a movie out of this book she would be Kathy Petro. The book is about a guy named Shark, but every epic guy has to have that one girl. Kathy is that girl. For a moment in their lives they're not together.But he is rich enough to have Kathy Petro lookalike model competitions all over the country. Kathy's a model btw. And he dates a lot of the winners.