The French Magic Show Book

This superb collection of Daniel Fuchs's fiction and essays about Hollywood, spanning half a century, records the vagaries of the film industry from the perspective of a screenwriter who toiled for the great studios in their heyday and was on the premises during their decline. Fuchs brought to this subject the watchfulness of a born novelist whose so-called Williamsburg Trilogy, about Brooklyn tenement life, remains a highlight of 1930's fiction -- a marvel of detached sympathy and supple naturalism, all the more remarkable for having been written by an immigrant son when he was in his 20's and on breaks from his day job as a public-school teacher in Brighton Beach. When MGM dangled a 13-week contract in 1937, he took the bait and journeyed west, but kept an eye fastened on the literary world back home.
-Sam Tanenhaus, The New York Times