Download or read book Tokyo Woes written by Bruce Jay Friedman and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this laugh-out-loud travelogue, an average American man journeys to a country unlike any other: 1980s Japan Early one morning, Mike Halsey leaves his sleeping girlfriend and his house deep in the woods to go out and buy the morning paper. His favorite deli is closed, so he keeps driving and winds up on an unfamiliar lakeside road. Then it hits him: the old wanderlust. The last time it struck, he ended up on the coast of Finland. This time, Mike heads east—to Japan. He doesn’t like sushi all that much and has no idea what he’ll do when he arrives. Luckily, he makes a new friend on the plane. Bill Atenabe invites Mike to stay with his family in Tokyo—“We’ve got plenty of room by Japanese standards,” he claims—and the two pals are soon sampling all that makes the Land of the Rising Sun unique, from Peeping Tom tours to department store attendants who dust you off before you step into an elevator to computers with a sense of irony. Mike quickly discovers, however, that not all is as happy as it seems in the Atenabe household. Bill’s wife is having an affair with a bamboo salesman, his son wants to give up a promising academic career to become a talent scout for a modeling agency, and his war-hero father is being forced into retirement. When Bill contemplates an act of desperation, Mike talks some good old American common sense into his friend and discovers the real reason for his own journey to Japan. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Bruce Jay Friedman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
Download or read book Wanting written by Angela Huth and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Harry Antlers, a once-successful theatre director, falls obsessively in love with Viola Windrush when she comes to New York for an audition. There follows a wild pursuit, taking him to her Norfolk house and to London, where she is decorating for her uncle. Finally, Harry is driven to desperation.
Download or read book A Mother s Kisses written by Bruce Jay Friedman and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An indefatigable, irresistible, and wildly inappropriate Jewish mother takes her 17-year-old son to school in this uproarious coming-of-age comedy Tall and scattered-looking, Joseph has just graduated from high school and is ready for college. But is college ready for him? Apparently not, judging by the rejection letter he receives from Bates and the deafening silence that greets his application to Columbia. While his friends pack their bags for schools across the country, Joseph mopes around the apartment in his bathrobe and checks the mailbox obsessively. It’s enough to make his mother fear for the boy’s sanity—so she resolves to take matters into her own hands. What follows is a sidesplitting series of misadventures as Meg, whom the New York Times Book Review called “the most unforgettable mother since Medea,” pulls out all the stops to get her boy what he wants. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Bruce Jay Friedman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
Download or read book Lucky Bruce written by Bruce Jay Friedman and published by Biblioasis. This book was released on 2011-10-11 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Like a Twilight zone with Charlie Chaplin"–Mario Puzo Writer, screenwriter, playwright, editor, actor, teacher: Bruce Jay Friedman has done it all, charming the glitziest industries of American golden-age culture for more than half a century. Lucky Bruce is his long-awaited memoir, and it's everything we'd expect and more: here is Friedman at his best, waltzing from Madison Avenue to Hollywood and back again, and reilluminating with brilliant clarity the dazzle of post-war American life. Self-effacing, wry, sharp, and laugh-out-loud funny, Friedman details with lovable candor his friendships and rivalries with the greatest writers, actors, publishers, directors and personalities of the last fifty years. He stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Steve Martin and Woody Allen. He's a dynamo of comedy and a recognized master of American letters. And in Lucky Bruce, whether he's fist-fighting with Norman Mailer, explaining to Richard Pryor why there are so few Jewish junkies, or writing screenplays in a closet with Natalie Wood as his secretary, Friedman is the king of understated charm. With cameos by Joseph Heller, Philip Roth, Mario Puzo, Lillian Hellman, Warren Beatty, Marlene Dietrich, Brian Grazer, Candida Donadio, Crazy Joe Gallo, Joyce Carol Oates, Jack Richardson, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Kurt Vonnegut, and the irreplaceable Elaine, Lucky Bruce is moving, scandalous, and guaranteed to shed new light on the brightest of American luminaries ... with Bruce Jay Friedman bright among them. Bruce Jay Friedman is a best-selling author, an Academy Award–nominated screenwriter, a magazine editor, a Hollywood actor, and a celebrated playwright. He lives in Manhattan, New York.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of American Humorists written by Steven H. Gale and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-14 with total page 1324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1988, this book contains entries on famous American Humorists. Humor has been present in American literature, from the beginning, and has developed characteristics that reflect the American character, both regional and national. Although American literature was, in the past, treated as inferior to British literature, there has always been a large popular audience for the genre, which this book shows. The figures with entries in this encyclopedia not only amuse in their writing, but also aim to enlighten- setting out to expose the foibles and foolishness of society and the individuals who compose it. It is the manner in which these authors try to accomplish this end that determines whether they appear in the volume. Indeed, the book will demonstrate that the best humor has at its base, a ready understanding of human nature.
Download or read book The Dick written by Bruce Jay Friedman and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pencil-pushing policeman becomes a badass sleuth in this off-the-wall detective story from one of America’s funniest writers Kenneth LePeters (née Sussman) is a “quasi-dick.” A public relations man for homicide bureaus, he carries a half-size badge and keeps his pearl-handled Smith & Wesson .38 locked in his desk drawer. Recently returned to the East Coast after 17 years in America’s heartland, he finds the cosmopolitan air of a big-city police department refreshing—the detectives treat him almost like a real member of the homicide family. Then everything goes horribly wrong. . . . A zoning quirk of their new neighborhood forces the LePeters’s 10-year-old daughter, Jamie, to go to the worst school in town. Blaming her husband, Claire LePeters starts an affair with Detective Chico, a cop turned underground filmmaker. To make matters worse, when his colleagues discover that LePeters is Jewish, their bonhomie dries up as fast as a false lead. To reclaim his manhood and get his family back, LePeters must become the full-fledged dick he never thought he could be. Bruce Jay Friedman’s twisted take on the cop novel is a hilarious, mordant, and wildly inventive portrait of a man daring to succeed in a world that has always expected him to fail. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Bruce Jay Friedman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
Download or read book The Current Climate written by Bruce Jay Friedman and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Screenwriter Harry Towns continues his misadventures in this novel from a New York Times–bestselling author and “witty chronicler of urban angst” (San Francisco Chronicle). Set in late-1980s New York, this novel continues the story of Harry Towns—who is well into his fifties and is feeling increasingly out of place in the world, but doesn’t let that stop him from pursuing success as a playwright (or at least making some quick cash by selling a TV series). He has a second wife and a young daughter, but he doesn’t let that stop him from bedding the occasional hooker (and getting mugged along the way). It isn’t easy getting older, but Harry plugs along. The only thing that truly paralyzes him is trying to decide whether to get tickets to Cats . . . “A triumph . . . Hilarious.” —The Globe and Mail (Toronto) “Harry Towns, like his creator, shows in the end . . . amazing resilience, inventiveness, hope and good humor.” —The Washington Post
Download or read book The Collected Short Fiction of Bruce Jay Friedman written by Bruce Jay Friedman and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 695 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An “irresistible” collection of short fiction by an author who “has been likened to everyone from J. D. Salinger to Woody Allen” (The New York Times Book Review). Hailed by Newsweek as “a bona fide literary event,” The Collected Short Fiction of Bruce Jay Friedman brings together dozens of the New York Times–bestselling author’s greatest stories, which originally appeared in Esquire, The New Yorker, and other magazines. “Readers who feel short stories are too high-flown—too literary, arcane, and serious—will find counterbalance in Friedman, whose stories have uncomplicated structures, obvious gists, intelligible metaphors, and unambiguous endings and come wrapped in humor. This compilation of his output in the short story form between 1953 and 1995 has a thematic arrangement, with categories such as ‘Mother,’ ‘Crazed Youth,’ and ‘Sex.’ Some of the more outstanding pieces are ‘The Subversive,’ about the narrator’s air force buddy whom the narrator believed to be the most all-American guy he ever met until his friend commits a crazed act; ‘The Gent,’ concerning a man who succumbs to a seduction by his best friend’s daughter; and ‘The Night Boxing Ended,’ in which ringside heckling goes way out of bounds.” —Booklist “From poignant bildungsroman to sly satire, from wicked comedy to surrealistic farce, this virtuosic collection covers more than four decades’ worth of short stories . . . Friedman explores themes such as loneliness, aging, fear, parenthood and ethnicity, spinning tales in an expertly modulated voice.” —Publishers Weekly “Friedman [is] more interesting than most of Malamud, Roth, and Bellow . . . What makes him more important is that he writes out of the viscera instead of the cerebrum.” —Nelson Algren, The Nation “Pure delight.” —Newsday
Download or read book The Peace Process written by Bruce Jay Friedman and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-10-13 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant new collection from one of American literature’s most original and hilarious purveyors of dark comedy Silenced by the horrors of Nazi Germany, a Jewish satirist is inspired to write again by his biggest fan: Joseph Goebbels. A retired English teacher dies on the operating table and wakes up to an afterlife in which literature does not exist; he can claim any masterpiece as his own, from The Catcher in the Rye to Crime and Punishment—if only he can remember what actually happens in those stories. On his first trip to the Holy Land, a down-on-his-luck filmmaker reluctantly agrees to help a young Israeli Arab escape to New York, only to watch in dismay as the upstart lands a buxom, Yiddish-speaking girlfriend and a monster movie deal. Mario Puzo once said that the world of Bruce Jay Friedman’s short fiction is “like a Twilight Zone with Charlie Chaplin.” Ironic, clever, perceptive, and hysterical, The Peace Process is vintage Friedman—fourteen finely crafted tales that take dead aim at the sweet spot between pleasure and pain.
Download or read book Even the Rhinos Were Nymphos written by Bruce Jay Friedman and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-06-29 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A few years ago, Christopher Buckley wrote of Bruce Jay Friedman in the New York Times Book Review that he "has been likened to everyone from J. D. Salinger to Woody Allen," but that "he is: Bruce Jay Friedman, sui generis, and no mean thing. No further comparisons are necessary." We are happy to report that he remains the same Bruce Jay Friedman in his unique, unblinking, and slightly tilted essays—collected here for the first time—in Even the Rhinos Were Nymphos. A butler school in Houston, a livestock auction in Little Rock, a home for "frozen guys" in California, JFK's humidor in Manhattan—all are jumping off points for Friedman's baleful and sharply satirical scrutiny of American life and behavior in the second half of the twentieth century. Travel with Friedman from Harlem to Hollywood, from Port-au-Prince to Etta's Eat Shop in Chicago. In these pieces, which were published in literary and mass-circulation magazines from the 1960s to the 1990s, you'll meet such luminaries as Castro and Clinton, Natalie Wood and Clint Eastwood, and even Friedman's friends Irwin Shaw, Nelson Algren, and Mario Puzo. Friedman is a master of the essay, whether the subject is crime reporting ("Lessons of the Street"), Hollywood shenanigans ("My Life among the Stars"), or his outrageous adventures as the editor of pulp magazines (the classic "Even the Rhinos Were Nymphos"). We could sing his praises as a journalist, humorist, and social critic. But, as Buckley tells us, being Bruce Jay Friedman is enough. Bruce Jay Friedman is the author of seven novels (including The Dick, Stern, and A Mother's Kisses), four collections of short stories, four full-length plays (including Scuba Duba and Steambath), and the screenplays for the movies Splash and Stir Crazy.
Download or read book Violencia written by Bruce Jay Friedman and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An ex-NYPD clerk teams up with a shady Broadway producer for a disastrous musical comedy in this hilarious novel by the New York Times–bestselling author . . . In addition to his desk job at the precinct, Paul Gurney has long been in charge of the department newsletter known as The Homicider—covering workplace news, dispensing advice, and disseminating interoffice gossip. But now, in the wake of a divorce, he’s decided to retire. What will he do next? The answer seems to come in the form of a shady Broadway impresario who wants to create a stage musical based on his newsletter. Gurney soon finds himself plunging headlong into the world of actors, agents, singers, songwriters, hacks, hams, and con artists. As the show, Violencia, moves from rounds of financing by suspect sources to questionable casting calls to a disastrous out-of-town opening (at each stage getting progressively—and hilariously—worse and worse), Gurney enjoys the high living, romantic flings, and glamour of the entertainment industry. But he also comes to realize that show people aren’t that different from other people he already knows: the thugs, lowlifes, and cutthroats he’s encountered during his career on the homicide squad . . . “His writing is so funny—and deceptively effortless—critics often liken it to a stand-up comedy routine.” —The New York Times
Download or read book Sino Japanese Power Politics written by Giulio Pugliese and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-12-16 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about Japan-China power politics in the military, economic and propaganda domains. The post-2012 standoff over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands has unveiled the antagonistic quality to Sino-Japanese relations, with an important addition: a massive information war that has cemented the two states’ rivalry. Under the Xi and Abe administrations, China and Japan insisted on their moral position as benign and peaceful powers, and portrayed the neighbor as an aggressive revisionist. By highlighting great power rivalry, this study makes a theoretical contribution in favor of the power politics behind Sino-Japanese identities. The work is multidisciplinary in spirit and aims to speak both to academics and to general readers who might be curious of understanding this fascinating if worrisome facet of Sino-Japanese relations. In turn, the assessment of the diplomatic, economic and identity clash between the world’s second and third wealthiest states provides a window in understanding the international politics of the Asia-Pacific in the early 21st Century. This book is an invaluable resource for scholars, Area Studies and Political Science students and policymakers alike.
Download or read book A Father s Kisses written by Bruce Jay Friedman and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A ridiculously funny novel about a devoted single dad who becomes an international hit man from the author of A Mother’s Kisses After losing his job as a poultry distributor, William Binny spends his mornings at the local diner polishing off a cheap breakfast and perusing the local paper. A widower with an 11-year-old daughter who could pass for 14, Binny has plenty of reasons to worry about the future. Salvation soon walks through the diner doors, however, in the form of a redheaded Englishman named Valentine Peabody. Peabody makes an unlikely proposition: He will pay Binny thousands of dollars to kill the enemies of his mysterious billionaire boss. The victims are bad men guilty of myriad crimes, but does Binny have what it takes to commit murder? For the sake of his daughter’s future, he is willing to find out. When his first few assignments do not go as planned, however, Binny starts to wonder if there is more to his new job than meets the eye. The shocking truth that he eventually uncovers brings this rollicking thrill ride to a conclusion so dramatic, hilarious, tender, and absurd it could only have been imagined by author Bruce Jay Friedman. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Bruce Jay Friedman including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
Download or read book The Routledge Encyclopedia of Jewish Writers of the Twentieth Century written by Sorrel Kerbel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-11-23 with total page 1716 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now available in paperback for the first time, Jewish Writers of the Twentieth Century is both a comprehensive reference resource and a springboard for further study. This volume: examines canonical Jewish writers, less well-known authors of Yiddish and Hebrew, and emerging Israeli writers includes entries on figures as diverse as Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Tristan Tzara, Eugene Ionesco, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Arthur Miller, Saul Bellow, Nadine Gordimer, and Woody Allen contains introductory essays on Jewish-American writing, Holocaust literature and memoirs, Yiddish writing, and Anglo-Jewish literature provides a chronology of twentieth-century Jewish writers. Compiled by expert contributors, this book contains over 330 entries on individual authors, each consisting of a biography, a list of selected publications, a scholarly essay on their work and suggestions for further reading.
Download or read book The Lonely Guy and The Slightly Older Guy written by Bruce Jay Friedman and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times–bestselling author finds the pulse of the aging American male in two ingeniously funny novels. “I just laughed myself sick” (Neil Simon). Two classic works of comic self-help fiction by “one of the funniest writers in America” available together for the first time in a single ebook edition (John Gregory Dunne). With its “sparkling . . . winsome and true” look at the single male in America—from his sad new apartment furnishings to his career struggles to the mystifying dating world—Bruce Jay Friedman’s The Lonely Guy’s Book of Life was as cringingly relatable to both men and women when it was first published in 1978 as is today (The New York Times Book Review). The inspiration for Steve Martin’s classic cult film comedy, The Lonely Guy, it was hailed as “the funniest book of this year, or most any other. You don’t close this book. You just start reading it again immediately. I loved every page–and laughed out loud on most of them” (Dan Jenkins, author of Semi-Tough and Dead Solid Perfect). Twenty years later, Friedman returned to the subject with The Slightly Older Guy, finding his quarry no longer alone, maybe a little less lonely, not so young anymore, faltering at fashion, pondering a new career, but just as resiliently witty. Featuring a new afterword, The Considerably Older Guy offers advice on such topics as divorce, grandchildren, exercise, diet, and insomnia. “If you believe in reading, then when a book comes along by Friedman, you have to read it. It’s as simple as that” (The Washington Post Book World).
Download or read book Contemporary Jewish American Novelists written by Joel Shatzky and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1997-07-16 with total page 537 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since World War II, Jewish-American novelists have significantly contributed to the world of literature. This reference book includes alphabetically arranged entries for more than 75 Jewish-American novelists whose major works were largely written after World War II. Included are entries for both well-known and relatively obscure novelists, many of whom are just becoming established as significant literary figures. While the volume profiles major canonical figures such as Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, and Bernard Malamud, it also aims to be more inclusive than other works on contemporary Jewish-American writers. Thus there are entries for gay and lesbian novelists such as Lev Raphael and Judith Katz, whose works challenge the more orthodox definition of Jewish religious and cultural traditions; Art Speigelman, whose controversial ^IMaus^R established a new genre by combining elements of the comic book and the conventional novel; and newcomers such as Steve Stern and Max Apple, who have become more prominent within the last decade. Each entry includes a brief biography, a discussion of major works and themes, an overview of the novelist's critical reception, and a bibliography of primary and secondary sources. A thoughtful introduction summarizes Jewish-American fiction after World War II, and a selected, general bibliography lists additional sources of information. Since World War II, Jewish-American novelists have made numerous significant contributions to contemporary literature. Authors of earlier generations would frequently write about the troubles and successes of Jewish immigrants to America, and their works would reflect the world of European Jewish culture. But like other immigrant groups, Jewish-Americans have become increasingly assimilated into mainstream American culture. Many feel the loss of their heritage and long for something to replace the lost values of the old world. This reference book includes alphabetically arranged entries for more than 75 Jewish-American novelists whose major works were largely written after World War II. Included are entries for both well-known and relatively obscure novelists, many of whom are just becoming established as significant literary figures. While the volume profiles major canonical figures such as Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, and Bernard Malamud, it also aims to be more inclusive than other works on contemporary Jewish-American writers. Thus there are entries for gay and lesbian novelists such as Lev Raphael and Judith Katz, whose works challenge the more orthodox definitions of Jewish religious and cultural traditions; Art Speigelman, whose controversial ^IMaus^R established a new genre by combining elements of the comic book and the conventional novel; and newcomers such as Steve Stern and Max Apple, who have become more prominent within the last decade. Each entry includes a brief biography, a discussion of major works and themes, an overview of the novelist's critical reception, and a bibliography of primary and secondary sources. A thoughtful introduction summarizes Jewish-American fiction after World War II, and a selected, general bibliography lists additional sources for information.
Download or read book The Sirens of Wartime Radio and How the American Print Media Presented Them written by Scott A. Morton and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-10-05 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sirens of Wartime Radio and How the American Print Media Presented Them: The Stories, the Intrigue, and the Evolving Coverage of Their Legacies analyzes press coverage from the American print media that helped construct popular images of Tokyo Rose, Axis Sally, Seoul City Sue, and Hanoi Hannah. Coverage of these “radio sirens” essentially constructed and defined these women’s legacies for an American audience. Scott A. Morton examines newspaper and magazine coverage from the periods of each broadcaster, and in doing so, analyzes four primary research inquires. Morton discusses how American newspapers and magazines portrayed each woman to American readers, how the American mass media’s portrayal of them evolved overtime from the mid-1940s through the present, the ways in which the American mass media responded to these five female propagandists—either directly or indirectly—through print, radio, and visual media, and how the legacy of each woman has been kept alive in popular culture in the decades since their last broadcasts. Morton argues that for the most part, coverage of the sirens was borne out of fascination and aversion, fascination stemming from the novelty of women acting as high-profile agents of enemy propaganda organizations and aversion stemming from the potential power they had over U.S. servicemen and the fact that they were viewed as traitors to the U.S. Scholars of media studies, history, and international relations will find this book particularly useful.
