This is a list of Hollywood novels i.e., notable fiction about the American film and television industry and associated culture. The Hollywood novel is not to be confused with the Los Angeles novel, which is a novel set in Los Angeles and environs but not overtly about the movie business and its effect on the lives of industry participants and moviegoers. For instance, the works of Paul Beatty, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, and Aldous Huxley's Ape and Essence are Los Angeles novels but not Hollywood novels; The Oxford Companion to English Literature deems Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust a standard example of the Hollywood novel.
The Hollywood novel genre dates to 1916 and is the "only American regional genre determined by a specific industry." Hollywood novels portray the entertainment industry as "glitzy, powerful, and often sleazy." According to the New York Society Library, "Yes, there is a part of Los Angeles called Hollywood, but the Hollywood of our imagination is so much more. It is the locus of the motion picture industry. Home to stars and producers and writers. A glamorous place. A place that is quintessentially American—where strivers and connivers can reinvent themselves and where there is always the possibility of being discovered. For better or worse, it has helped to define our country to ourselves and to the world. It is easy to see why writers have taken it up as a subject so frequently."
According to author Michael Friedman in Publishers Weekly, "My informal taxonomy revealed that, as far as subject is concerned, Hollywood novels tend to fall into the following loose categories: moguls (Fitzgerald), divas (McCourt, Vidal), train wrecks (Stone, Didion), ingénues en route to stardom (Lambert), foolish dreams of being discovered (West, McCoy), and Brits who have had enough of our philistine ways and ersatz culture and return home to civilization (Waugh, Wodehouse)." Author Title Year Katherine Albert Remember Valerie March 1939Jane AllenI Lost My Girlish Laughter1938 Clive Barker Coldheart Canyon 2001 Cal R. Barnes True Grandeur 2017 William Boyd The New Confessions 1987 Ray Bradbury A Graveyard for Lunatics 1990 Christopher Bram Father of Frankenstein 1996 Gwen Bristow Tomorrow Is Forever 1943 Brock Brower The Late Great Creature 1971 Charles Bukowski Hollywood 1989 Edgar Rice Burroughs The Girl from Hollywood 1922 James M. Cain Serenade 1937 Don Carpenter A Couple of Comedians 1979 Don Carpenter The True Life Story of Jody McKeegan 1975 Don Carpenter Turnaround 1981 Robert Carson Love Affair 1958 Raymond Chandler The Little Sister 1949 Jackie Collins Hollywood Wives 1983 Ray Connolly Shadows on a Wall 1995 Robert Crais Lullaby Town 1992 Charles Dennis The Dealmakers 1981 Joan Didion Play It as It Lays 1970 Dominick Dunne An Inconvenient Woman 1990 Dominick Dunne Another City, Not My Own 1997 John Gregory Dunne True Confessions 1977 John Gregory Dunne Playland 1994 James Ellroy The Big Nowhere 1988 James Ellroy The Black Dahlia 1987 James Ellroy L.A. Confidential 1990 James Ellroy White Jazz 1992 Henry Farrell What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? 1960 Peter Farrelly The Comedy Writer 1998 Carrie Fisher Postcards From the Edge 1987 Steve Fisher I Wake Up Screaming 1941 F. Scott Fitzgerald The Last Tycoon 1941 F. Scott Fitzgerald The Pat Hobby Stories 1962 Paula Fox The Western Coast 1972 Daniel Fuchs The Golden West 1989 C.W. Gortner Marlene 2016 Richard Grenier The Marrakesh One-Two 1983 Doris Grumbach The Missing Person 1981 Richard Hallas (Eric Knight) You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up 1938 MacDonald Harris Screenplay 1982 Alfred Hayes My Face for the World to See 1958 Tom E. Huff Marabelle 1980 Aldous Huxley After Many a Summer 1939 Clive James The Silver Castle 1996 Jay Richard Kennedy Prince Bart 1952 Amanda Lee Koe Delayed Rays of a Star 2019 Michael Korda Queenie 1985 Gavin Lambert The Goodbye People 1971 Gavin Lambert Inside Daisy Clover 1963 Gavin Lambert Running Time 1982 Gavin Lambert The Slide Area 1959 Janet Leigh The Dream Factory 2002 Janet Leigh House of Destiny 1995 Elmore Leonard Get Shorty 1990 Anita Loos A Mouse Is Born 1951 Anita Loos No Mother to Guide Her 1961 Norman Mailer The Deer Park 1955 Alan Marcus Of Streets and Stars 1960 Anthony Marra Mercury Pictures Presents 2023 Armistead Maupin Maybe the Moon 1992 James McCourt Kaye Warfaring in "Avenged" 1985 Horace McCoy I Should Have Stayed Home 1938 Horace McCoy They Shoot Horses, Don't They? 1935 Larry McMurtry Somebody's Darling 1978 Rasheed Newson There's Only One Sin in Hollywood 2026 Jennifer Niven Hollywood Blonde 2014 Joyce Carol Oates Blonde 2000 Darcy O'Brien A Way of Life, Like Any Other 1977 John O'Hara Hope of Heaven 1938 John O'Hara The Big Laugh 1962 Stewart O'Nan West of Sunset 2015 James Patterson Mary, Mary 2006 Tim Powers Medusa's Web 2016 Taylor Jenkins Reid The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo 2017 Harold Robbins The Carpetbaggers 1961 Harold Robbins The Dream Merchants 1949 Theodore Roszak Flicker 1991 Thomas Sanchez The Zoot Suit Murders 1978 Budd Schulberg The Disenchanted 1950 Budd Schulberg What Makes Sammy Run? 1941 Pat Silver-Lasky Ride The Tiger 2010 Amy Sohn The Actress 2014 Martha Southgate Third Girl from the Left 2006 Matthew Specktor American Dream Machine 2014 C.K. Stead Sister Hollywood 1989 Robert Stone Children of Light 1986 Jacqueline Susann Valley of the Dolls 1966 Adriana Trigiani All the Stars in the Heavens 2016 Gore Vidal Hollywood 1990 Peter Viertel White Hunter Black Heart 1953 Bruce Wagner Dead Stars 2012 Bruce Wagner I'm Losing You 1996 Nathanael West The Day of the Locust 1939 Harry Leon Wilson Merton of the Movies 1922 Gary K. Wolf Who Censored Roger Rabbit? 1981
Novels set in satires of Hollywood Author Title Year James Robert Baker Boy Wonder 1988 Steve Erickson Zeroville 2007 Michael Friedman Martian Dawn 2006 Michael Grothaus Epiphany Jones 2016 Rupert Hughes City of Angels 1941 Geoff Nicholson The Hollywood Dodo 2004 Terry Southern Blue Movie 1970 Michael Tolkin The Player 1988 Gore Vidal Myra Breckinridge 1968 Gore Vidal Myron 1974 Bruce Wagner Force Majeure 1991 Bruce Wagner I'll Let You Go 2002 Bruce Wagner Still Holding 2003 Evelyn Waugh The Loved One 1948 P. G. Wodehouse Laughing Gas 1936 Charles Yu Interior Chinatown 2020
See also Bibliography of Los Angeles
References
Further reading Brooker-Bowers, N.: The Hollywood Novel and Other Novels About Film, 1912–1982: An Annotated Bibliography, Garland, 1985. Slide, A.: The Hollywood Novel: A Critical Guide to Over 1200 Works with Film-Related Themes or Characters, 1912 through 1994, McFarland & Co., 1995.