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.
[more]
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
Here are some tunes that Stewart is listening to while on the road. Give it a listen via Spotify!
Stewart visited the Sony Lot (formerly MGM) yesterday! Check out the pics below.
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.
[more]
Stewart will be at Warwick’s tonight!
San Diego, CA
Warwick’s, 1/29/2015 7:30pm
http://warwicks.indiebound.com/event/stewart-onan
The Works of Stewart O'Nan 