A great time at Warwick’s in San Diego (1/29/2015)!
Stewart will be in Bellingham tonight — the event is held at Village Books:
Bellingham, WA
Village Books, 1/31/2015 7pm
http://www.villagebooks.com/event/stewart-onan-1/31/15
For all that has been written, said, extrapolated from, and culturally metabolized about F. Scott Fitzgerald, the last few years of his life are often dismissed as a steady downward slide from writing The Crack Up, published February 1936 in Esquire, to his premature death of a heart attack in December 1940 at just 44 years old.
But it was during that time that Fitzgerald moved to Hollywood, reinvented himself, repaid his debts and fell in love for the final time. Of course, he also failed to finish a new novel, felt the impact of his worsening health, and struggled to maintain a relationship with his beloved but committed wife, Zelda. It’s not the expat parties in Paris of the 1920s so often associated with the author. But it was an interesting time in the life of one of the most celebrated literary figures of the 20th century. In his newest novel, West of Sunset, Stewart O’Nan presents a fictionalized account of these final years, bringing to life scenes of Fitzgerald in Hollywood. We talked to O’Nan about fictionalizing such a famous figure and what he learned about Fitzgerald in the process.
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Stewart is in Seattle today for two events!
Seattle, WA
The Pub @ Third Place Books, 1/30/2015
http://www.thirdplacebooks.com/rav-auth-event
Elliott Bay Books, 1/30/2015
http://www.elliottbaybook.com/event/stewart-onan
Stewart O’Nan’s greatest gift as a writer is his ability to work in miniature. His greatest novel, Last Night at the Lobster, is nothing more than the story of the final day of a failed Red Lobster restaurant. With absolutely no gimmicks or sentimentality, O’Nan gave the staff and operations of a backwater chain restaurant outpost the same care and attention that, say, Jonathan Franzen bestows upon terrible suburban American families, and the results are riveting. His novel The Odds, about a married couple trying to give their dying marriage one more shot by taking a Valentine’s Day trip to Niagara Falls, is similarly small in scope, a quiet story about an ordinary couple.
His newest novel, West of Sunset (Viking, $27.95), represents a departure from that formula. It’s a novel about the last days of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who is about as far away from an average restaurant manager as you can get. Setting aside the fact that writing a novel about the author of TheGreat Gatsby is pretty gutsy, O’Nan also writes about Hollywood in the late ’30s, when legendary figures like Humphrey Bogart and Dorothy Parker were holding court in bars around the city.
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Stewart will be at Warwick’s tonight!
San Diego, CA
Warwick’s, 1/29/2015 7:30pm
http://warwicks.indiebound.com/event/stewart-onan
Today begins the California part of the West of Sunset tour. To start things off, here are two photos from an event last year. They were taken at Musso and Frank Grill, which is one of the locales that makes an appearance in West of Sunset. Next to the restaurant was Stanley Rose’s bookstore (in operation from 1935 to 1939), where folks like Fitzgerald, Nathanael West, John O’Hara, and William Faulkner went to talk and drink in the back room!
In attendance: Stewart O’Nan, Holly Watson, Sales rep Tom Benton, Sales Rep Amy Comito; Booksellers Ed Conklin, Chaucer’s (Santa Barbara); Allison Hill, Vroman’s and Book Soup; Adrian Newell, Warwick’s (San Diego); Julie Slavinsky, Warwick’s (San Diego); Steve Salardino, Skylight (LA).
From left to right: Ed Conklin, Adrian Newell, Holly Watson; Julie Slavinsky, Tom Benton, Steve Salardino, Allison Hill. Photo credit: Amy Comito.
Left to right, seated: Steve Salardino, Stewart, Allison. Left to right, standing: Tom Benton, Julie Slavinsky, Adrian Newell, Ed Conklin, Amy Comito, Holly Watson.
Stewart will be in the great state of California this coming week, starting tonight at Rakestraw Books. Come on by!
Danville, CA
Rakestraw Books, 1/23/2015
http://www.rakestrawbooks.com/upcoming-events
Sonoma, CA
Reader’s Books, 1/24/2015
http://readers.indiebound.com/
Berkley, CA
Books, INC, 1/26/2015
http://www.booksinc.net/event/2015-01
Los Angeles, CA
Diesel Books (Brentwood), 1/27/2015
http://www.dieselbookstore.com/brentwood-staff-recs-events-bestsellers-and-more
Pasadena, CA
Vroman’s Books, 1/28/2015
http://www.vromansbookstore.com/event
San Diego, CA
Warwick’s, 1/29/2015 7:30pm
http://warwicks.indiebound.com/event/stewart-onan
From the L.A. Times:
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s legacy has become synonymous with the glamour of the Jazz Age and the success of “The Great Gatsby.” His complicated life with wife Zelda has become the stuff of myth, portrayed in numerous biographies and novels.
However, during the last three years of his life, Fitzgerald was a troubled man in poor health, his wife consigned to a mental asylum and his finances in ruin. It was also during this period in time that Fitzgerald strove to make a new start as a Hollywood screenwriter.
Stewart O’Nan’s novel “West of Sunset” (Viking, 304 pp., $27.95) offers a glimpse into this time in Fitzgerald’s life as he arrives on the MGM lot, falls in love with gossip columnist Sheilah Graham, struggles with his addiction to alcohol, works on “The Last Tycoon” — all while trying to maintain a semblance of family normalcy with Zelda and their daughter, Scottie.
O’Nan chatted about the book by phone from his Pittsburgh home. He will be discussing his book at Diesel Bookstore in Brentwood on Jan. 27 at 6:30 p.m. and at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena on Jan. 28 at 7 p.m.
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The Works of Stewart O'Nan 