The True Life Story of Jody McKeegan

by Don Carpenter

Genres: Fiction

250 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Don Carpenter was an American writer, best known as the author of Hard Rain Falling. He wrote numerous novels, novellas, short stories and screenplays over the course of a 22-year career that took him from a childhood in Berkeley and the Pacific Northwest to the corridors of power and ego in Hollywood. A close observer of human frailty, his writing depicted marginal characters like pool sharks, prisoners and drug dealers, as well as movie moguls and struggling actors. Although lauded by critics and fellow writers alike, Carpenter's novels and stories never reached a mass audience and he supported himself with extensive work for Hollywood. Facing a mounting series of debilitating illnesses, Don Carpenter committed suicide in 1995.

Reviews

[David Haight · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why don't more people read this guy? The first section of this book is some of the best story telling I have ever read. Carpenter writes about small, sad, "inconsequential" lives as good if not better than anyone I have ever read. I can't recommend his work highly enough.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not love this book. As the title implies, this was a little too real, way too dark, and without hope.

[William Lashner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a strange, lovely novel in two parts. The first part is a sad sordid tale of drifting lives in Portland, upended by a strange sexual predator with a nice hands and a phallic head. The second part is an interesting Hollywood tale about all that goes into a fairly lousy movie. The two parts are brought brilliantly together in the final lines. It's hard to figure out what Carpenter is going after here, but the thing never flags and you can see his mastery of the material and pacing. This whole Hollywood trilogy of his is unlike anything I have ever read before, a little like Irwin Shaw except with less propulsive momentum, but also without the clear point Shaw is always trying to make, which is in Carpenter's favor.

[Guy Salvidge · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is much better than A Couple of Comedians, the first book in the Hollywood Trilogy, which turned out to be all movie-making bullshit and no story. This was 80% compelling story and 20% movie-making bullshit, hence the four star rating. It does bog down a little when the story switches over to Harry the producer's problems, but in general this is a strong story with a powerful ending. It reminds me somewhat of James M. Cain's Mildred Pierce, except that Jody is ultimately a fuck-up and not a strong person, except that she wanted to fulfill her dead sister's dream. Brilliant ending, actually. I'm almost tempted to change this to five stars but I still feel that the middle sags somewhat, as middles often do.

[Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, man, what a great book. Don Carpenter was the real deal, an amazing writer. I'm going to have to read all of his books.

[Phillip · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carpenter's attention to minuscule details of a variety of human personalities makes him the Steinbeck of the latter half of the 20th century, complete with different problems and senses of despair. I wish there was more of him to read.

[Adrian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a heart wrenching story from beginning to end.

I discovered Don Carpenter last year and now I can't get enough of him. The fact that he's damn near unknown is insane. He is a master storyteller and deserves to be read much more than he is.

He's a realist (my favorite), but unlike Steinbeck, his characters and stories are not so romantic. Carpenter's stories revolve around broken people living broken lives. His characters are true to life, contradictory, self-destructive, and real, so-so real.

In Hard-Rain Falling and in The True Life Story of Jody McKeegan, The protagonists' childhood years, disordered parents, shitty upbringings, shape the lives of the protagonist as their stories transition into their adult years. And there's always something traumatic that stunted them early on and continues to hinder them as adults. This is a force that the character can't see for themselves, but we as the readers can. And so we read with sadness and dread as it influences their decisions, derails them at every turn. You feel for them. They have so much potential, yet just when it seems that they're doing good for themselves, they find a way to fuck things up. There was a couple of points where I had to set this book aside cause I felt like I was watching a train wreck unfold, line by line. And because his characters are so strong, so relatable, you hate to see what they are doing to themselves. You want to shout at them on the page. That's the thing about Carpenter: he doesn't moralize or over explain his characters' actions. He just lets them live. They are beautiful, they are ugly, they are real.

Don Carpenter, through his troubled characters, expresses a truth of life: There are no clean endings. Throughout the story a lot of things are left to hang: unanswered, unexplained. As I got to the end of this book I was wondering how he would land the ending, whether it'd be tragic or happy. The last chapter had me suspended, waiting for the gut punch, but hoping for the sigh of relief. Instead I was left to quietly reflect. This seems to be a feature of every Carpenter book I've read so far. The ending that re-frames the entire story and paints it all in a new light. It's very powerful writing.

[Benjamin Kahn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It started a little slowly - I found some of Jody's childhood dragged a bit, but it definitely picked up when it got to Hollywood. I thought Carpenter did an excellent job of illustrating the boredom of waiting - Lindy killing time in her empty apartment, Jody killing time in an empty hotel suite and later, on a movie set. And also showing the self-destructive streak that arises from the boredom.

The characters were compelling, the process of the movie coming together was interesting, and I liked the protagonist's connection to A Couple of Comedians. Overall, a very good book.

[Ben Brackett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed it more than meh, but not enough to 4 star. The writing itself is really good.

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Hollywood story much like other Hollywood stories, but as told by Carpenter, it's all just very low key and believeable, with a never dull character at its center. Peculiar structure to this book, with the first half about Jody's childhood and more about her sister, really, and the second half years later in Hollywood, with a kind of abrupt ending that feels just right.