My novel is about Jewish immigrants, pre-WWI.
It's the second in a four-part series on the spiritual founding of Hollywood and Los Angeles. I wrote the first draft of the first installment during Nano 2002. It was incredibly fun and I just picked it up again about a month ago. Still needs lots of work, but I wanted to take a couple of months away from it for NaNoWriMo--my best friend as a writer!
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Sep 27, 2008 - 15 10
That sounds extremely interesting. To me at least since I really enjoy history. Especially around those Time periods. So is your novel going to be fictional characters or based off real people? Sorry if this seems like an..an obvious question.. Heh..
----------'Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.' - Jules de Gaultier
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Sep 27, 2008 - 17 52
Fictional, but I think it'll be a challenge to blend the fictional with the historical in a credible way. I'm planning to base one character largely off of Adolf Zukor, the founder of Paramount Studios.
My main source at this point is *An Empire of their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood* by Neal Gabler. His theory is that the early Jewish moguls used the movie industry to create an ideal vision of American, one to which the "gates of power" and status would not be closed for Jewish people.
The book also makes the argument that, to the extent that America's self-concept is based on themes and motifs from Hollywood movies, the American identity is a Jewish invention.
Of course I don't want to just re-hash Gabler's theories, but they're an irresistible starting point.
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Sep 29, 2008 - 22 04
Oh I will have to look up that book. Well just by the sounds of your novel it's going to have a lot of issues with racism. Since back in that day and age it must have been hard for Jews and any immigrants.
So your main character...can you tell me more about him? XD I am keeping the conversation going!
----------'Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.' - Jules de Gaultier