Posted by
Icarus on Friday, November 03, 2006 1:39:29 AM
giving us an inside look at life among the Liberal Hollywood Elite, in Michael Tolkin's
The Return of the Player. And he couldn't be more shallow, narcissistic and generally obscene.
I just finished reading Michael Tolkin's sequel to
The Player, titled, naturally,
The Return of the Player.
The Return is a book that Liberals will love, for is it just chock full of the Liberal worldview. If Conservatives enjoy reading about the debased lives the ultra-wealthy live then there may be something here for them as well. They may enjoy this in the same way Liberals enjoy "American Beauty". The Left believes that behind every door in the center-right American landscape live middle-age men who lust after teenage girls and closet homosexual, Nazi-loving ex-military men. The Right believe that behind every door in Tinsel Town, New York or Martha's Vineyard are sex crazed, pot-smoking do-gooders who couldn't care less if what they do actually does any good, as long as it gets them invited to the right parties.
Every character in
The Return of the Player could not be more depraved or pathetic. There is the main character, Griffin Mill, a guy whose sole goal in life is to get as rich as possible so he can afford to buy an island to which he can escape when the world ends.
There is the cruel gay Jewish producer Hollywood producer who only cares about breaking the billion dollar barrier in personal wealth, and who thinks that Griffin is just the guy to help him through it. $750 Million, you see, just isn't enough. There is Griffin's Goth loving, sometimes Mormon sometimes Jewish ex-wife whose main source of personal satisfaction is phone sex with guys she meets online. There is also Griffin's current wife, who won't divorce Griffin because he doesn't have enough money to keep her in the lifestyle she's become accustomed to. These are the central figures revolving throughout a world of wealth most people cannot imagine.
While this is a darkly humorous look at the lives in the incredibly wealthy, where a private school isn't just a place where your child is educated. It's the key to the executive washroom for the parents, which for them, is far more important. It is also a 240 page excursion into the Liberal mind. I often had to remind myself that Tolkin is not giving me a polemic, as much as he is giving me what Liberals whether in Hollywood, Telluride or Martha's Vineyard think.
There is this:
"Now the little girl, proto-punk and all that, smarter than her parents, wise avatar of anew generation that the future, if perspective and posterity survive, will recognize as the pivot of history that everything since the discovery of Hispaniola had waited for, dreamed of, slaughtered, and died for, all those Thermidors, Year Zeroes, Long Marches, reconciliations of VHS and Beta, Bluetooth, Woodstocks, Entebbes, and parades of assassins, broadbands, WiFi, Grant Theft Auto, the American refusal to ratify the Kyoto Accords, Bob Dylan's ads for Victoria's Secret, the Chechen murder of schoolchildren, and the two elections stolen by George Bush." - Emphasis added.
And this:
"The billionaires were angry, yes, but never indignant. ... Corrupt evangelists, pedophile priests, messianic Jews, no weapons of mass destruction stolen elections: How could anyone manage to survive in a dying world if he let the collapse of institutions distract him?" - Emphasis added
At page 176-177 we are given a long diatribe, by one of the billionaire's referenced in the quote above, on how it is Hollywood's job to "destroy religion". This, the billionaire Gunther Hitt talking to Griffin, is just a taste:
"Too many Christians at a Passover seder and I feel like I'm putting on a floor show luau. The ritual becomes entertainment - that is, if religion doesn't destroy the world before we can get the world to destroy religion. But that's Hollywood's job. ... You were a good soldier in the battle against religion"
And mixed into this speech are one of the many references about how manmade global warming is going to melt the polar ice caps and we're all going to have 3 days to get our stuff in order. Did I mention that this is a work of fiction. I probably should at this point. Despite the fact that it often reads like a Michael Moore mockumentary.
After slogging through the liberal nonsense throughout this work one comes to the end where we are given an entire chapter that is Griffin Mill, Narcissist, Nihilist, Polygamist and Porn-promoter in dialog with none other than former Pres. William Jefferson Clinton. In a book where the current Pres. is referred to predominantly as a guy who stole elections we are informed that "Bill Clinton adds to everyone's knowledge of themselves. For that, these men are willing to let him f*** their wives. Clinton is a genius..." Thank you, Michael Tolkin, for that bit of insight.
Would I recommend this book? Only if you can keep reminding yourself that this is a work of fiction satirizing the insane world of the Liberal Elite. I just wonder if that is what Michael Tolkin meant to write.