Mercury Pictures Presents

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Mercury Pictures Presents

Mercury Pictures Presents

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It is that voice that sets him apart and above: a quiet, compassionate, observational wit that he uses both to highlight essentially tragic circumstances and to soothe them. While that voice remains and speaks throughout his latest novel, Mercury Pictures Presents, there’s an antic quality here that we’re not used to from Marra. It’s almost as though he received editorial notes equivalent to a woman being told to smile more. Artie looked at Maria and across that long stare the musculature conjoining their intuitions flexed.

Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra | Waterstones

Just to ease the dramatic tension, though, I’ll state up front that, in the end, Marra melted my heart, and I view Mercury as a worthy addition to the author’s canon. Hence, her life becomes her work at Mercury, a place run by Artie and his identical twin, Ned, two men who’ve never been mistaken for one another and hate each other’s guts:Anthony Marra weaves a magical and spellbinding piece of historical fiction set in the 1940s era of the movie business in Los Angeles and the rise of fascism and WW2 in Europe. The beauty, wit and lyricism of his prose shines as he atmospherically evokes a group of European emigres, exiles employed by Mercury Pictures, run by the man of many toupees, Artie Feldman, and his able assistant, the ambitious Maria Lagana. Maria has escaped Mussolini's Italy with her mother, her anti-fascist, defense lawyer father, Giuseppe, left behind facing political internment in San Lorenzo in circumstances that leave Maria bearing a burden of shameful guilt for which she refuses to accept any form of forgiveness. She and her mother live with her unforgettable great-aunts, the widows Mimi, Lala and Pep Moriburo, for whom love, a venereal disease of the heart, is curable through marriage. With Mercury Pictures under financial pressures, Artie has been summoned to face the Senate investigation, accompanied by the ever reliable Maria. Maria is in love with a Chinese American actor, Eddie Lu, condemned to playing stereotypes that bring him real life dangers. A glimpse of Germany in the inter-war years is provided by the miniaturist Anna Weber, devastated by the loss of her son, Kurt, when her Nazi husband is given custody. In San Lorenzo, portrait photographer, Nino Picone, escapes, arriving in LA with a stolen identity. With Pearl Harbour and the American entry into WW2, the fortunes of Mercury Pictures change dramatically as they make morale boosting war propaganda, but the emigres are designated enemy aliens, made to feel unworthy and unwanted. Anna heads to Utah, with her miniaturist talents being utilised by the American military. The characters lives intersect and connect as we learn of their pasts, present and sometimes their future. How do you feel different characters experience exile, both at home and abroad? How do invisible prisons differ from real ones?

Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra | Goodreads

Let’s not get carried away. But I suppose that’s the impression we want to make on these East Coast bankers. It takes a genius to know when to be taken for a fool.” A novel so rich and wondrous . . . that there’s only one word for Anthony Marra: genius.” —Sally MannWhen Nino’s mother dies, Giuseppe pays Concetta Cortese, another San Lorenzo widow, to raise Nino the rest of the way. Her son Vincent, “a hormonal freak of nature who probably began shaving at nine and fathering illegitimate children at ten,” improbably becomes Nino’s protector once he realizes the boy pays rent. This is Giuseppe’s foster family. I haven’t prepared an opening statement,” he admitted. All at once, he felt very much like the man he spent a great deal of psychological effort convincing himself he was not: a middle-aged narcissist whose bald spot had outpaced his toupees, a guy about to have his loyalties questioned and character maligned on the largest stage in America, an ex-boxer who could defend himself in a dark alley but not in a well-lit hearing room on Capitol Hill.

Mercury Pictures Presents: A Novel by Anthony Marra Mercury Pictures Presents: A Novel by Anthony Marra

It's been six years since publication of Anthony Marra's last book, and finally the wait is over. With Mercury Pictures Presents, he carries the themes and style he'd honed in his two earlier masterpieces, and has created another. I'd thought the WWII era had been so thoroughly milked that further reworking would be redundant, but Marra has breathed life into a story centered around the collection of emigres attracted to Los Angeles and their contribution not only to the movie industry, but to the cultural enhancement of the country as well. Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South. Here, I have an idea.” In the lower right corner, under the Produced By credit, Artie crossed out the John in John Doe and wrote Jane . “Jane Doe. No one, and I mean no one, will have any doubt who Jane Doe really is. Satisfied?” Maria might have been had she not noticed the one non-anonymized name on the poster. It appeared right above the title, in small but legible cursive: Art Feldman and Mercury Pictures Presents …

Epically entertaining . . . You’ll laugh, you’ll cry in the marvelous Mercury Pictures Presents.” — San Francisco Chronicle Sweeping story that takes the reader from Italy to Hollywood in the 1940s, while exploring the many ways immigrants were penalized during WWII due to xenophobia. It begins in Italy where protagonist Maria Lagana is a young girl. Her father is a lawyer defending citizens against outlandish accusations brought by the fascist government. Due to Maria’s youthful error in judgment, her father is arrested and confined on an island. She and her mother emigrate to the US, where they live with her aunts. She gets a job with Mercury Pictures, a second-tier film studio, and eventually ends up in a production role working with Artie Feldman, the studio head. As a daughter of the Greatest Generation, I saw many characteristics in the characters that I observed in my own parents. Theirs was a generation focused on survival. First, during the Great Depression and then World War II. Like my parents here in ... - JHSiess

Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra - Publishers Weekly Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra - Publishers Weekly

Well that was freaking stupendous. I laughed, I cried, I marveled at the illustration of man's inhumanity to man. No really, no shade, all those things happened as I read this gorgeous book. And speaking of gorgeous, the prose! Brilliant line after brilliant line. Whomever. The point is, that Sistine Chapel is something, isn’t it? You want to know what I think?” She didn’t, but Artie’s opinions moved with the tottery insistence of a drunk barging past the maître d’. “I think this Michael Angelo character must’ve been the Preston Sturges of his time.”

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This elicited a rare grin from Artie. As a master bullshitter, he encouraged his apprentice’s efforts. Despite her sex and ethnicity, he knew Maria was, at heart, a Feldman Brother through and through. “I pay them to lie,” Artie said, nodding in the direction of the accounting department. “I pay you to be honest.” “Honestly, you look like Elmer Fudd’s dad.” Artie winced. “I don’t pay you to be that honest.” “Then you should pay me more.” Neatly illustrating all of these themes is Maria’s beloved: the third-generation American actor Eddie Lu, who can recite Shakespeare and Chekhov but is only ever allowed to play nefarious Asians with caricature accents, and who always wears his “I’m Chinese American” button in public to keep from getting beaten up. He is prevented by California law from marrying the woman he loves.



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