The disenchanted

Description

"Often praised as Budd Schulberg's masterpiece, The Disenchanted tells the tragic story of Manley Halliday, a fabulously successful writer during the 1920s - a golden figure in a golden age - who by the late 1930s is forgotten by the literary establishment, living in Hollywood and writing for the film industry. He is hired to work on a screenplay with a young writer in his twenties named Shep, who is desperate for success and idolizes Halliday. When the two are sent to New York City, a few drinks on the plane begin Halliday's epic disintegration due to the forces of alcoholism and the powerful draw of memory and happier times. Based in part on an ill-fated writing assignment between the author and F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1939, Schulberg's novel is at its heart a masterful depiction of Manley Halliday - at times bitter, at others sympathetic and utterly sorrowful - and The Disenchanted stands as one of the most compelling and emotional evocations of gererational disillusion and fallen American stardom." --from back cover.