Bijou

by David Madden

Hardcover without jacket. First edition. Spine is slightly marked and worn; boards are faintly sunned, with a little wear at lower edges. Page block head is foxed. One or two minor marks on page block and rear pastedown. Binding a little shaken; all pages are sound. Text is clear throughout. TS

Genres: Fiction

500 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1974

About the author

There are several authors with this name

This author:
David^Madden

Other authors with same name:
David^^Madden: David Madden

David Madden is an American writer of many novels, short stories, poems, plays, and works of nonfiction and literary criticism.

Madden was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, to James Helvy and Emile Merritt Madden. He was named after David Madden, president of the East Tennessee Packing Co., where many of Madden's family worked. At the age of 16, he was a radio announcer for WKGN in Knoxville. His first success was winning second place in a statewide one-act play competition with “Call Herman in to Supper” when he was 16. He graduated from Knox High School in 1951.

Madden enrolled at the University of Tennessee in 1951. In 1952, he became a seaman in the Merchant Marine. Following his discharge from the army in 1955, he returned to the University of Tennessee and graduated in 1957 with a B.S. in education; he earned an M.A. in creative writing from San Francisco State University in 1958, and received a John Golden fellowship to attend Yale School of Drama from 1959 to 1960.

Reviews

[David]

I don't remember why I read this book, except that it dealt with a boy's impressions of movies of 1946, often mysteries or thrillers of some sort, because that's what i was reading in this period. it was a current book, so it might have been recommended in the New Yorker, which I was reading then, too. I also was reviewing books and movies at that time, so it might have come across my desk for that reason.

In any event, it's apparently a "roman a clef," as the protagonist is 13 years old, which would have been Madden's age in 1946. This is a "literary" book and is dense at times.

In 1976, Steven King called Bijou "one of the books I admire most in the world." King was lamenting that Madden worked on the book for six years and made about $15,000 in cash as a result of his labors. At the same time, King wrote "Salem's Lot" in eight months (including revisions) and made $500,000.

[Patricia N. McLaughlin]

Madden creates a fictional world in which life, literature, and movies create a tangle of illusion and reality in the mind of his hormonal 13-year-old protagonist, Lucius Hutchfield, who narrates a strange movie-novel in his head that is often difficult to follow. Fans of Forties’ films will enjoy the numerous references to the stars and movies of the time.