MAYDAY

by Jonathan Lynn

""Joanna is in desperate need of $10,000, now or soon. No holds barred.""

Ernest Mayday, a best-selling British author living in a Hollywood Hills mansion with a beautiful masseuse, has everything that money can buy - except an idea for his next book.

Then he replies to the personal ad placed by the mysterious, tantalizing Joanna. She needs money, fast, and will do anything to get it. Compromising a juror on a major fraud trial is just the beginning of an increasingly labyrinthine plot - a plot that Ernest realizes will make the perfect novel.

But is Ernest observer or voyeur? When does fact end and fiction begin? What is the truth about the Reverend Abel Pile and the sinister Angel of Darkness? Suddenly Ernest finds he is no longer calling the shots - and the bullets are real!

What writers and critics have said about MAYDAY:

""With a keen eye for satire, British novelist Lynn skewers Hollywood, religion, the creative arts and science.

Successful British expat novelist Ernest Mayday thinks his biggest problem is a serious case of writer´s block as the deadline for his new novel looms. Not the fact that his girlfriend Randi devotes most of her time (and money) to Rev. Abel Pile´s Church of the Community of Personal Truth, a cause-like all other matters of religion-for which Mayday has no use, especially since he thinks the good reverend is probably more con artist than man of the cloth. And not the fact that Randi wants to get married while Mayday sees no benefit to himself-a deal is a deal, marriage included. He finds sudden creative inspiration though a newspaper ad that catches his eye: A woman claims she needs $10,000, “no holds barred.” And so he makes her an offer she can´t refuse: He´ll match the money she makes on whatever other offer she accepts as long as she reports whatever happens back to him, giving him a plot for his new book. What commences is a twisting tale of blackmail, criminal prosecution and jury-tampering, high-stakes Hollywood deals and unrequited love and lust that barrels into a risky yet surprisingly rewarding conclusion… The novel, although first published in the UK in 1993 and revised and edited for publication in the US, holds up well 15 years later. Mayday´s crises and commentary remain fresh. Lynn, author of ""Yes, Minister"" and creator and co-writer of the BBC series based on that and other books, has a cinematic writing style that lends itself well to the story and substance of the book. A multilayered comic romp."" - Kirkus Review

“Jonathan Lynn, with his marvelous sense of the comic and his artist’s eye for detail, and with MAYDAY he has spun an unforgettable portrait of the exotic denizens of LA. -- engrossing, scathingly funny, original.” - Oliver Sacks

""It is several satirical novels for the price of one, all jostling and milling and spraying their targets with unrestrained vigor."" - The Times Literary Supplement.

""Very funny... will keep you turning the pages right to the surprising end."" - Eric Idle

“The funniest novel I have read in ages.” - John Mortimer

“Move over, Raymond Chandler and Nathaniel West - Jonathan Lynn´s hit LA. A thought-filled, mystery-laced, laugh-packed, cynical, satirical, knockout novel that takes on L.A.’s cluttered complex culture, the gratuitous embroidery of Amercian speech, the seismic idiocy of the movie business, feel-good religion, feel-bad psychoanalysis, academian nuts, single sex, and group, as well.” - Larry Gelbart

Genres: Fiction

348 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 15, 2002

About the author

Jonathan Lynn has directed 10 feature films including the cult classic Clue (he also wrote the screenplay), Nuns on the Run (also written by Mr Lynn), My Cousin Vinny, The Distinguished Gentleman, Sgt. Bilko, Greedy, Trial And Error, The Whole Nine Yards, The Fighting Temptations and most recently, Wild Target. His first produced screenplay was The Internecine Project (1974).

For television, Jonathan’s writing credits include dozens of episodes of various comedy series but he is best known for the phenomenally successful, multi-award-winning BBC series Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, co-written and created with Antony Jay.

Jonathan authored the bestselling books The Complete Yes, Minister and The Complete Yes, Prime Minister, which cumulatively sold more than a million copies in hardback and have been translated into numerous languages and are still in print nearly 30 years later; Mayday (1993, revised 2001) and his latest book Comedy Rules (Faber and Faber), which also received rave reviews.

Jonathan made his first professional appearance on Broadway in the revue Cambridge Circus, and his television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show, live with 70 million viewers, both at the age of 21. Jonathan’s West End theater debut, aged 23, was as an actor in the role of Motel the Tailor in the original London cast of Fiddler on the Roof. His subsequent London directing credits include: The Glass Menagerie; Songbook (Best Musical, Olivier Award and Evening Standard Award); Anna Christie (RSC, Stratford and the Donmar); Joe Orton's Loot; Pass The Butler by Eric Idle, Shaw’s Arms And The Man and The Gingerbread Man (Old Vic). At the National Theatre, he directed A Little Hotel on the Side by Georges Feydeau and Three Men on A Horse (Olivier Award, Best Comedy). As Artistic Director of the Cambridge Theatre Company, he directed 20 productions, producing 20 others, 9 of which transferred to the West End.

His numerous awards include the BAFTA Writers Award, Writers Guild (twice), Broadcasting Press Guild (twice), NAACP Image Award, Environmental Media Award, Ace Award –Best Comedy Series on US cable, and a Special award from the Campaign For Freedom of Information.

Lynn received an MA in Law from Cambridge University and now lives in New York, describing himself as a recovering lawyer.

Reviews

[Sid Nuncius · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jonathan Lynn is a brilliant comic writer, but I didn't think Mayday added up to all that much in the end.

First published in 1993, this is the story of Ernest Mayday, a cynical and grumpy Englishman and writer of potboilers who has moved to Hollywood to work but who finds himself blocked. His girlfriend is heavily involved in a "church" whose founder and guru is about to be tried for financial and sexual misconduct. Mayday becomes embroiled in a clever, convoluted scheme to try to get the inside story and adapt it for his next novel, while at the same time pitching a screenplay for an adaptation of an earlier book.

It is all very well written and it's a decent story, but it did feel a bit stale to me, I'm afraid. The targets of Lynn's satire are all thoroughly deserving of ridicule; vacuous intellectual pretentiousness, the shallowness and dishonesty of the film business, exploitative fake religions, the mangling of language and so on…but they have all been pretty thoroughly skewered both before and since Mayday was published. This ended up feeling a bit like an amalgam of Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One, The Bonfire Of The Vanities (which Lynn explicitly references) and the TV series Episodes. The story just managed to keep me reading and is cleverly twisty, but it did get very wordy and preachy, especially in the last few chapters, and in the end I was rather glad to finish the book.

For me, this hasn't aged all that well and for a comedy genius like Jonathan Lynn, I don’t think it counts among his best work. It's OK, but no more, I think.

(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)

[Frank Watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

MAYDAY by Jonathan Lynn is a book about writers and writing. A satire about Hollywood. An insightful and often humorous look at the human condition. And sometimes a sad and tragic look at the human condition.

Ernest Mayday, the main character, is a writer caught between worlds, neither of which appreciate him as a writer. He has been pegged as a “trash novelist” because he became famous and rich through commercial fiction. He is involved in Hollywood, however, where fame and fortune is all that is important.

In Hollywood,he learns, “the writer is such a low form of life that nobody owns up to being one at all if they can help it...if you’re not an important enough writer to be a supervising producer or a consultant…you have to settle for being a mere producer. Or an associate producer, a story editor or—at the very least—a story executive...But if all you are called is a writer, God forbid...you will be ignored, re-written, sent to get the coffee and bagels and if you have the temerity to make a suggestion at a story meeting you’ll be told to shut…up.”

On the other side of the writing world, in academia, he does not get credit for being a “real” writer. At one point, English professors offer Mayday the chance to teach creative writing:

‘We think you are the perfect person to teach creative writing here in our English faculty…Your use of signifiers in your work, sequentially so formless and uninteresting in themselves, creates excellent openings for new reading and linguistic strategies and for a healthy emancipated subjectivity among the students. And, of course, this is coupled with your experience of film, where semiotic analysis is so productive…The creation of texts is exactly the direction we should be going in, especially trashy post-modern texts. We’re on the cutting edge here. It’s actually better to create our own texts so that we can decode their semiotic significance ourselves.’

Mayday proves, however, that he is a person who truly understands writing, because he is a Writer:

“Writing is telling the story well, the ability to write good, interesting, funny, real dialogue, the creation of characters who are believable and stay with you when you’ve forgotten what they actually said. It’s the hard mental and physical slog, sitting at your desk hour after hour, day after day, month after month, trying to perfect every phrase, writing down every tiny transient thought before it escapes, perhaps for ever, in case it opens a new door, creates a new plot twist or an insight into character. It all has to be turned into some sort of magical confection that makes the mouth water, that keeps the reader turning the pages, that makes you want to know what happens next. And it has to have resonance beyond the immediate struggles of the characters, so that readers feel that the story, however unlike their own lives, relates to them.”

The book itself is difficult to simplify down to a few sentences. The plot itself is at once delightfully complicated and simple. The characters are multi-layered. As already noted, it is at once funny and sad. While it incorporates philosophy and sly jests, it is hardly erudite. Rather, it is written in an enjoyable (one might even call it accessible) style.

In other words, MAYDAY is highly recommended.

[Pat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally published in the early 90's, this was not really my sort of book but I nevertheless enjoyed aspects of it. It was very much about a journey of self discovery of one man - which seemed to go horribly wrong.

Ernest Mayday is a grumpy, sexist English author with two bestsellers under his belt of the potboiler variety. But having exhausted his knowledge and ideas in his chosen genre he has been suffering writer's block. He moves to Los Angeles where he lives large on his royalties with his not quite live-in girlfriend, Randi, who has found religion in a new age style church. Ernest is also trying to pin down a movie deal for one of his books but he still can't write. Until he sees an intriguing ad in the personal columns of a local LA rag where a woman is seeking $10,000 for services rendered - "no holds barred". He contacts the woman who claims to be a prostitute and they devise a deal whereby he agrees to pay her to tell him about what services others are asking of her for this money. He will match whatever she earns. So she contacts him in a while to say that a John Schmidt has asked her to compromise a juror on a high profile fraud case. Ernest is thrilled, he plans to use this as the basis for a new book and the woman, Joanna, is to keep him in the loop. Its only later he learns that the fraud case is against the leader of the church that is girlfriend is enamoured with.

All goes well until Ernest begins to suffer a crisis of confidence and quite literally, sanity. I won't go into all the machinations but there are plenty of those to entertain the reader. What I loved about the book was the dialogue, Lynn put the English language through the most complex callisthenics I have ever seen and it was quite amusing. He seemed to be taking the piss out of Hollywood pretentiousness and doing an excellent job of it. What I didn't like (and never do) were the high levels of introspection and pages and pages where nothing happened. A bit of a shock ending redeemed the book a little. Thanks to Endeavour press for a copy of the book in exchange for a review.

[Joyce · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 and 1 / 2 stars

Ernest Mayday has hit a wall. He is a famous writer, mostly in Britain, who suddenly has developed writer’s block. He goes to Los Angeles to check out the scene there and in hopes of coming up with an idea for a book. Historically, he has written some action novels, filled with financial facts and mostly based in the financial world.

He gets an agent and a lawyer – they seem to come together in LA. Casting about for ideas, he notices an advertisement in the classified section of the newspaper. It seems a woman named Joanna needs $10,000.00 and is willing to do anything to get it. What an interesting idea. That would make a good book!

He writes to the woman. Time passes and he gets no reply. Slowly, he forgets about the idea. When she does finally contact him, he is pleasantly surprised and flustered. He arranges to meet her in a local bar.

What follows is a ride though tinseltown. We meet many odd and unique personalities along the way.

I did not realize when I opted for this book that it was a re-print. But, no matter, it is a nice book. It is well written and plotted and reads very well. Mr. Lynn’s background in comedic television serves him well in this novel.

I want to thank NetGalley and Endeavour Press for forwarding to me a copy of this book for me to read.

[Stanley Goldyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Mayday" sparkles with the wit of Jonathan Lynn, the co-creator of "Yes, Minister".

On this occasion, Lynn has whisked off his British sense of humour to LA, where Ernest Mayday, a story-blocked English novelist, has taken up residence with a pretty masseuse.

A prince of sardonic wit, Lynn has peppered the chapters with cynicism, sarcasm and humour. Not only his name selection - Glen Tornoff, Sidney Byte, Milton Toner, Lennie Lesser, Mark Down - but wonderful sentences - "whose five o'clock shadow was showing through at ten minutes to six" - have come together to give the reader a relaxed and entertaining tale.

Ernest Mayday heads the cast of Lynn's memorable characters, a world-weary writer who calls a spade a spade and one who is unable and unwilling to suffer fools. The verbose Dr Julian Genau, lawyer Kanpinchowitz, the effervescent Oliver Sudden and the insuppressible literature academics from the local university's English Faculty, keep the story flowing with clever and amusing enjoyment. Ernest starts off well; analytical, careful and shrewdly decisive, yet as we near the end and after many unrelenting choruses of Happy Birthday, his reasoning becomes erratic and blurred as guilt and uncertainty begin to plague him.

Lynn writes with that street-smart, well-weathered sense of British humour that gained traction post-war, and developed into the engaging style of authors of the calibre of Douglas Adams, P G Wodehouse and Stephen Fry who became not only entertainers but a tonic to their readers and fans.

A clever and mischievously contrived story from a funny man. Certainly worth a read.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mayday is a very funny, very cynical ‘text’ about a self-sabotaging writer called Ernest Mayday.
Like Jonathan Lynn’s greatest creation Sir Humphrey Appleby, he has been a civil servant.
A theme in the book is an exploration of language and how we say one thing, and mean something else, and how the meaning of one phrase can shift from sentence to sentence. One character repeatedly uses the words “a kick in the ass.” Sometimes it signifies a good thing, and sometimes bad.
Sir Humphrey often says something is courageous, when he really means it is suicidal. In Mayday, the absolute minimum condition is great, or major, which in fact is merely adequate.
Ernest is a rich writer and consultant, and has a great life. Except that he doesn't. He is creatively blocked, cannot form meaningful relationships, and is thoroughly miserable. He cannot be happy and find love, until he gets out of his own way.
The plot of this book is quite silly, and involves lots of Hollywood types, a cult leader, and women Ernest cannot hope to understand. And a gun. The farcical elements remind me of classic Michael Frayn, and the ending is quite unexpected although it makes perfect sense.

[Madelon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've not read such angst since I put paid to THE CATCHER IN THE RYE. Meet Ernest Mayday, bestselling British novelist transplanted to Los Angeles... Hollywood... movie capital of the world. He doesn't believe in God, abhors the thought of marriage, and he is blocked. Yes, a novelist who has reader's and writer's block. Where Holden Caulfield's tale is all about angst, Ernest Mayday's is all about the satire that is Los Angeles, Hollywood, and movies.

MAYDAY has it all: psychobabble, double talk, and, y'know, like words of exaggerated complexity. It has a religious cult, a sainted hooker, and a crime or two all wrapped up with a tidy bow of characters with names like Max. Kirsch, Randi Loner, Norm de Plume, and Oliver Sudden.

If you think I've given anything away here, I don't do spoilers, but maybe you get some broad hints of a book that is literate bordering on illiterate, funny bordering on sad, and most of all a story you will recall at the oddest times.

Oh yes, and pay particular attention to Chapter 19.

[Slávek Rydval · Rating 4 out of 5]

Příběh úspěšného (a fiktivního) spisovatele Ernesta Maydaye napsaný Jonathanem Lynnem (určitě znáte jeho Jistě pane Ministře/Premiére) je krásná ukázka typického anglického humoru plného sarkasmu a cynismu.

Autor si bere na paškál americký způsob života, jeho povrchnost a ubohost. Ukazuje filmové prostředí tak, jak je z bonusů na DVD „Film o filmu“ rozhodně poznat nemůžeme. Stejně tak popisuje, jak mohou fungovat různé církve, které z lidí vysávají jejich prostředky a když tak učiní, akorát je odkopnou. Opomenuti nezůstanou ani profesůrci na universitě.

Některé pasáže mohl Lynn vynechat, neboť mi pro román nepřipadly důležité, naopak nudily. Ale nebylo jich mnoho, takže čtyři hvězdy odpovídají mému pocitu z knihy.

Český překlad se mi zamlouvá, pouze občas člověk narazí na vynechané slovo či překlep. Ale co zmůžeme, když se na kvalitu nehledí.

K přečtení doporučuji všem, komu je bristký humor blízký a současně americký způsob života tak vzdálený.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 Stars
Ernest Mayday, a best-selling British author living in a Hollywood Hills mansion with a beautiful masseuse, has everything that money can buy - except an idea for his next book.
Then he replies to the personal ad placed by the mysterious, tantalizing Joanna. She needs money, fast, and will do anything to get it. Compromising a juror on a major fraud trial is just the beginning of an increasingly labyrinthine plot.
Characters are very well described as you would expect from the author and their back stories lead us to how they are today. There are twists that I wasn’t expecting. An enjoyable read but I felt it was a little dated, it was originally published in the early 1990’s

My honest review is for a special copy I voluntarily read

[Myprivatebookclub · Rating 4 out of 5]

⚙️this book has been in my shelves for a very long time. The book has travelled with me to several countries by car, plane, train or foot, but I never found the time to dedicate myself. Now, both me and the book were rewarded.
⚙️the book was funny, interesting, had a plot twist, probably foreseen long before the end of the book by many readers, including myself.
⚙️I loved all the British edginess of Ernest, hated Randi throughout the book and smiled, where appropriate.
⚙️lots of aspects of the daily life were humoured, criticized and discussed in length.
⚙️the end made me sad, but what a different possible ending could we have?

[Eunice Korczak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mayday

This book employs language and scenes I do not particularly enjoy reading. In addition, in many instances headway is achieved by simply slogging along. In many other instances it is highly interesting, imparting facts about script writing, the processes of bringing a script to production, and surprisingly, an inside look at big business evangelism. Twists bring mundane activities and soul searching to surprising conclusions along the way. And the final conclusion was completely surprising to me.

[Tomáš Radoň · Rating 4 out of 5]

Major translation mistakes by Jan Klíma

[Kent · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sadly a little dated and nowhere near as good as the Yes Minister material. In the end, it became a little laboured to finish.