Word: eitel
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...book itself deals principally with the sex lives of two couples--film director Charles Francis Eitel and his bed-mate Elena Esposito; and movie star Lulu Meyers and her lover Sergius O'Shaugnessy, the narrator of the book. But interwoven into the story are Marion Faye--a pimp at 21; a homosexual movie actor; and a number of other perverted characters. In Mailer's moral code, however, these latter characters are destroyed, for only those who can find companions of the opposite sex are favored by the author...
...Eitel, on the industry's black list for not answering a McCarthy-type committee, is despondent, not because he has no job, but rather because he could not seduce a teenage swimmer. The narrator, who has come to Desert D'Or with fourteen thousand dollars won in an unbelievable Air Force poker game, is equally sad because he could not fulfill his sexual needs in Japan. But into their lives come Elena and Lulu, and after some near-pornographic love-making scenes, the two men are both happy again, and better able to enjoy life in Mailer's world...
...world for ordi- nary morals or sentimentality--there is only room for what he calls "a good time." There is no religion, nor any idealism--only a desire to be free--and to be free, one must be able to choose whom he wants to sleep with. Thus Eitel in the end ultimately fails because he has married Elena out of pity and is forced to spend his nights with her. Sergius, on the other hand, escapes from Desert D'Or to find his freedom--and new mistresses--in Mexico...
...country of tough-guy nihilism mapped by James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. O'Shaugnessy does not get around to writing but he meets 1) a real lulu named Lulu who helps him over his embarrassing bedroom block; 2) a misunderstood film genius called Charles Francis Eitel (symbolically pronounced "eye-TELL"), who is trying to decide whether to tell all before a congressional committee. While skulking in Desert D'Or, Eitel dreams about the great film he hopes to make some day-a story about an M.C. of a This-Is-Your-Life-like TV program...