This Is Your Life - Brossura

O'Farrell, John

Brossura

ISBN 10: 080214134X ISBN 13: 9780802141347

Casa editrice: Grove Pr, 2004

Riassunto

A funny, satirical novel about fame follows the misadventures of Jimmy, a loser who manages to convince an inexperienced journalist that he is the latest sensation in comedy--a farce that gathers momentum each time the story is retold. Original.

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Product Description

A hugely entertaining novel about the art of stand up comedy, This is Your Life was a runaway bestseller in England. O'Farrell's hero, Jimmy Conway, starts out the novel at the London Palladium. He is about to perform his stand up comedy routine in front of two thousand invited guests and millions more watching the event live on TV. He steps out blinking into the spotlights and waits for the applause to die down. He tries to appear confident but he can't help wondering whether he should have shared his little secret with someone by now. Jimmy has never performed any stand up before - ever. Conway, a nondescript thirtysomething with a long-faded dream of telling jokes in public, starts the proceedings at the lowest point in his life - teaching school, spending his evenings with a old and grizzled collection of barroom bores (including his ex-girlfriend Nancy) and generally feeling miserable over never having gotten his one lucky break. Things take a turn for the better when a local comedy legend, Billy Scrivens, with whom Conway has exchanged a fragment or two of small-talk while out running, drops down dead. Interviewed on television, where he is plausibly represented as the deceased's jogging companion, Jimmy suddenly discovers a tiny chink in the door of the closely guarded gateway to fame and celebrity. After snatching a ticket to Billy's funeral (paid for by the UK equivalent of People Magazine, and awash with the rich and famous) he convinces a gullible journalist that he is the latest underground comedy sensation, a performer so principled that he shuns TV and restricts himself to unscheduled appearances at out-of-the-way clubs. A stack of forged reviews from a phantom American tour does the rest. Courtesy of a rave profile in a national newspaper, his career takes off. The subsequent rollercoaster ride whisks him all the way from a best new stand-up comedy award (where his acceptance speech loss of nerve - "Look, there's been a terrible mistake" - is taken as

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Grove Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2004
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 080214134X
• ISBN 13: 9780802141347
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 320
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile