Golk is a rich and marvelously detailed novel by a man with a cultivated intelligence; it is also the first really good book I have read about television.

Television has little to do initially with the portrait that Stern paints of his central protagonist, the 38-year-old perpetual student Hondorp, whose life at the novel’s start consists only of roaming the streets of New York, observing, mingling with people, passing time till he can go home to his father’s apartment in Manhattan—where, after dinner, he reads, and his father languishes in front of the tv till he sleeps—and then begin again his aimless routine all over the next day. Within census records, you can often find information like name of household members, ages, birthplaces, residences, and occupations. Biography: Richard Stern, professor of English at the University of Chicago, is the author of many works of fiction, including Other Men's Daughters, Natural Shocks, and the recent, much-acclaimed A Father's Words. Read more about the condition New: A new, unread, unused book in perfect condition with no missing or damaged pages.Golk’s ambitions are to take his show to heights of revelation, where he uncovers the seedier workings of the powerful, the movers and shakers who control people’s lives, to bring them down to size and make them seem no more than the common man, if not worse. And while it’s possible to see that Hondorp’s character was warped by television, is it the novelist’s intent to suggest that the instance is endemic…? People were willing to become golks, for it was an entrée into celebrity, an exalted realm above the activities of the mere scrabblers in life. Dust jacket designed by Jozef Gross] Dust jacket bright, fairly worn and rubbed with a number of small nicks tears and creases, front joint with inside flap is completely torn, now secured in a removable archival sleeve; Boards firm and clean, corners sharp, black titles; Internally clean, no ownership mark or annotation, light toning to the endpapers; Binding firm.

We have examined two or three different cars to look at the condition of the sound deadening materials underneath the carpet and were quite shocked at how much deterioration had taken place. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. Its protagonist is equally clueless, although he learns, and he is equally taken under the wing of a strange guy who tries to be mythic and always the smartest guy in the room. Combining high drama with surreal hilarity and presenting a remarkably prescient view of the future of television, Golk ranks with Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust as one of the finest novels ever written about the American entertainment industry.Golk manipulates the high and mighty, the lowdown and dirty, and the outrageous weird; all are within the compass of Richard Stern in this early novel, a comedy with as many inspired maneuvers as its rambunctious protagonist has for taking the measure of a profligate world. This gallery is dedicated to some of the best fiction and nonfiction portraying one of the greatest cities in the world.

I found this battered novel in the basement of Black Squirrel Books in Ottawa, ON, buried in a pile of old, orange Penguin paperbacks (if you ever see a pile of old, orange Penguin paperbacks, do not walk away from them. Through a devastating series of exposures—"You're on Camera"—Golk manipulates the high and mighty, the lowdown and dirty, and the outrageous weird; all are within the compass of Richard Stern in this early novel, a comedy with as many inspired maneuvers as its rambunctious protagonist has for taking the measure of a profligate world. Between 1966 and 2003, in the United States, Golk life expectancy was at its lowest point in 1978, and highest in 1989. Interlarded in the romance of Hondorp and Hendricks are a couple of scenes of Golk on the skids, unsure of where he might go and what he might do, initially resentful and upset, then resigned. The more combative the personality, the better the joke, and to help trap his victims Golk enlists a team of misfits, including Herbert Hondorp, a scholarly layabout turned photogenic decoy, and Jeanine Hendricks, a twenty-three-old debutante with a bitter worldview.

Fingering the battered cover and flipping through the yellowed pages inside, eventually the cashier saw my point and I purchased it for a mere two bucks. Through a devastating series of exposures-"You're on Camera"-Golk manipulates the high and mighty, the lowdown and dirty, and the outrageous weird; all are within the compass of Richard Stern in this early novel, a comedy with as many inspired maneuvers as its rambunctious protagonist has for taking the measure of a profligate world. Both novels are about what is real, both in art and in relationships, and both get into manufacturing reality through the latest media. The concept has its extra-novel correlate in Alan Funt’s Candid Camera, a radio, then television show, which in several incarnations, prevailed on television for forty years, now displaced by the likes of “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and the plethora of youtube offerings. It is midcentury America, the golden age of television, and a man named Golk is wreaking havoc with the medium.