I Was Howard Hughes

This book offers an intoxicating immersion into the world of Howard Hughes and his imaginary biographer, Alton Reece. As a former aerospace employee, I was highly interested in the details author Steven Carter wove into his tight, dazzling narrative. Anyone who has driven by the Westside and South Bay area of LA should realize what rich turf Hughes lived in, including the airplane factories that dotted and still grace the landscape (if you know where to drive). This book creates a small gem of a world that reflects the larger intellectual possibilities that Hughes once embodied, and sadly, lost along with his fiction biographer Reece.

This is a unique work. It would have been easy for Carter to go for cheap laughs. He doesn't. He stands aside and lets the story run. Biographer Alton Reece is everywhere. Amazingly, we do not even sense the presence of Steven Carter. Most writers can't do that. The scenes with Hughes' body double were among the funniest I have read in a lifetime of reading. The work is brilliantly understated. Cater has literally created a literary form unlike anything seen before. How wonderful! How rare!Beneath the humor of this work is a deep sorrow. We are all Howard Hughes on one level or another. Every damn thing is insane and Carter knows it.I Was Howard Hughes is the most original book since A Confederacy of Dunces. It is similar to Barth's The End of the Road. It's funny as hell but will also wring you out and throw you in bed for a week. I hope it gets the audience it deserves. Carter should win the Pulitzer Prize.

Smart, eccentric, and by turns hilarious, Carter's first novel is more compelling and accomplished than at least ninety percent of the mouthy, self-referential, post-postmodern drivel that fills the pages of McSweeney's and passes for literary "art" these days. Melding fact and fiction into one cohesive story, Carter resurrects a number of American icons--Hughes, Ava Gardner, Lana Turner, J. Edgar Hoover, Robert Kennedy, Jimmy Hoffa, Bugsy Seigel, to name a few--but without the hardboiled punchiness of James Ellroy or the mechanical syntax of Don DeLillo. In this extremely impressive debut, Carter weaves together a multiplicity of voices without missing a beat. Most impressive is Carter's ability to channel the quirkiness of both Hughes and his shady biographer without turning them into one-dimensional jokes. A timely release given the forthcoming Hughes biopic directed by Martin Scorsese. Read the book of one master storyteller (Carter, or should I say Alton Reece?), then watch the film of another!

This book is a lot of fun to read. It really keeps you guessing until the last page. It is very well done and expertly written. It's funny, too, and a page-turner. Steven Carter is an up and coming young novelist with his whole career ahead of him.I highly recommend picking up this excellent first edition.

This story (and I had to keep reminding myself--THIS IS FICTION)--made me laugh, made me cry, made me wonder, and made me think. If there were more books like this one, I would buy more books. When may I expect a sequel???