Everything That Moves

by Budd Schulberg

Garden City, Doubleday,, 1980.. Very good in a good dust jacket (light remainder spray,corners bumped, overall edgewear to the dj).. First printing. "A documentary novel" by the author of 'What Makes Sammy Run' and 'Waterfront.' This is the saga of Joey Hopper, 'a rough-and-tumble working-class opportunist who learns how to beat corrupt union bosses at their own game as he carries their traditional swindles to unprecedented heights'. 251 pp.

Genres: Literature

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Budd Schulberg (1914–2009) was a screenwriter, novelist, and journalist who is best remembered for the classic novels What Makes Sammy Run?, The Harder They Fall, and the story On the Waterfront, which he adapted as a novel, play, and an Academy Award–winning film script. Born in New York City, Schulberg grew up in Hollywood, where his father, B. P. Schulberg, was head of production at Paramount, among other studios. Throughout his career, Schulberg worked as a journalist and essayist, often writing about boxing, a lifelong passion. Many of his writings on the sport are collected in Sparring with Hemingway (1995). Other highlights from Schulberg’s nonfiction career include Moving Pictures (1981), an account of his upbringing in Hollywood, and Writers in America (1973), a glimpse of some of the famous novelists he met early in his career. He died in 2009.

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Budd Schulberg was a virtuous insider in different American 'rackets'...& none involved tennis balls or soft drinks! This briskly-paced novel of the early 80s tackles head-on the labor {sic} union/organised crime nexus which almost crippled the American economy.The main protagonist is named Joey Hopper (Jimmy Hoffa?!)...& thinly-veiled pen-profiles of several Stateside 'personalities' enliven what reads like a screenplay...Schulberg gave us classic cinema screen-writing in 'On The Waterfront'...& displays an abiding contempt for the whole dollar-driven impetus of so many superficially-worthy politicians, union reps & businessmen...Schulberg should have a higher profile himself for his powerful indictments of so much of complacent American morality. Reading this novel & his other little grenades makes me think that liberals in the US of A today have had a dose or two of amnesiac prophylatics! Donald Trump has much to learn too...or he'll suffer the same fate as J.H...in fresh concrete bodysuit! Fifth Amendment time comes around like Christmas!

[M.R. Dowsing · Rating 3 out of 5]

Budd Schulberg's one of my favourite authors and I thought it might be interesting to read this before Scorsese's new film The Irishman is released as both are about Jimmy Hoffa ('Joey Hopper' here). This novel seems to have been Schulberg's least popular, so I didn't set my expectations too high. It's a good book, but Schulberg's decision to tell it from a fly-on-the-wall perspective in the present tense means that it reads almost like a screenplay and lacks some depth. We never really get inside the heads of the characters, and they come across as 'types' whom you can imagine being played by actors 'straight from central casting'. I could see James Cagney as Hopper, with Gloria Grahame and Wesley Addy in supporting roles. I felt very much as if I had just watched a black-and-white film from the '50s rather than read a novel with a story taking us up to 1975. Schulberg's heyday was in the '50s and this book made me think perhaps he was a little stuck in that time period.

[John Marr · Rating 1 out of 5]

Budd Schulberg at his worst.