About Harry Towns

by Bruce Jay Friedman

Book Overview

Bruce Jay Friedman has been hailed by critics as a comic genius, a writer whose vision confronts the malaise of contemporary life with a liberating deadpan humor. Grove Press is proud to reissue one of the classic novels by this acclaimed master of modern humor. About Harry Towns is the story of the eponymous screenwriter, a man reveling in the freewheeling atmosphere of the early 1970s, a bicoastal playboy with a broken marriage and a child he rarely...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802137385
• ISBN13: 9780802137388
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Portrait of the Artist as Aging Screenwriter

About Harry Towns is one of the funniest books I have ever read. It is also a profound look at an essentially decent, reasonably intelligent, if occasionally silly man adjusting to a world that has become a little more deranged while he has gone about the business of living. Bruce Jay Friedman manages to balance many moods - sadness, compassion, and optimism - in this very funny look at a screenwriter who wonders just how the hell he got to this strange place in his life. Read it and weep with laughter.

Screenwriter As Sensitive Thug

Harry Towns is right out of the mouth of James Brown: "I'm a Greedy Man." He is a man who can feel sympathy for a wealthy coke dealer but want to smash in the head of a someone who tries to discipline his son. Harry Towns is a New Yorker who learns to appreciate LALA Land..he is open to experiences...he is open to coke, whores, various neuroses, random acts of violence, random acts of cowardice, all the while following a strict code of rules set up for the governance of Harry Towns...in a strange way like a noble bandit in a western, Harry Towns is governed by his own set of rules, which upon this reader's reflection are just, wise, humane and if a touch selfish serve to keep the bandit sane in a world of totalitarian, brutal, evil, materialistic and vacuous Good Citizens.