This new collection by one of America’s premier performers and most innovative and provocative artists includes 100 monologues from his acclaimed plays and solo shows Drinking in America ; Men Inside ; Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead ; Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll and more. Also included are additional pieces from Talk Radio and Notes from Underground .
Eric Bogosian is an American actor, playwright, monologuist, novelist, and historian. Descended from Armenian-American immigrants, he grew up in Watertown and Woburn, Massachusetts, and attended the University of Chicago and Oberlin College. His numerous plays include Talk Radio (1987) and subUrbia (1994), which were adapted to film by Oliver Stone and Richard Linklater, respectively, with Bogosian starring in the former. Bogosian has appeared in plays, films, and television series throughout his career. His television roles include Captain Danny Ross in Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2006–2010), Lawrence Boyd on Billions (2017–2018), and Gil Eavis on Succession (since 2018). He also starred as Arno in the Safdie brothers' film Uncut Gems (2019). He has also been involved in New York City ballet production, and has written several novels as well as the historical nonfiction Operation Nemesis (2015).
this was in no way a bad collection, i’m just not the intended audience. eric bogosian is extremely talented, and i can tell that his work is good, but i just don’t quite click with it. i’m a lot like the wet rag in no. 68 “Voice in the Wilderness”, and it’s not that i want to be, i just wasn’t able to fully get most of the monologues. they were really interesting though! i’m also not big into theatre, so this was really out of the yoozh for what i normally read, so don’t take my lower rating too seriously! i feel really bad giving it such a low rating, but it just wasn’t my cup of tea 😔 as an intro to monologues it was really cool though, and i think they’re such a fun form of art! i probably won’t be checking out many more, but i’m glad i at least got a taste of them!
A lot of fun to read and to imagine directing. Oddly enough, some of the most fun are also some of the most... dated, in a way, although not in the 'obsolete' sense, but rather as 'period pieces', x-rays of the American '80s at their most savage and iconic. And then there are the Bill Hicks-ian ones, the ones with the real meat on their bones (as far as I'm concerned at least), the ones from 2000 on. It's where Mr. Bogosian finally starts flirting with philosophy, moving ever so slightly from the realm of character caricature to what feels like genuine character, honest, brutal, urgent. I loved this book, overall.