From Publishers Weekly
Be grateful for what you have. That's the moral of playwright/television writer Greenland's first novel, but what a wildly circuitous, over-the-top route we take to arrive at it. A pitch-perfect sendup of Hollywood's endemic self-importance, the brilliantly acid narrative centers on two characters, a rebellious Lenny Bruce-like comedian named Frank Bones (he fondly refers to himself in the third person, hence the title), and Lloyd Melnick, a highly successful TV comedy writer. The two became acquainted in New York when Melnick, then a struggling journalist, wrote a profile of the up-and-coming Bones. Greenland reunites the pair years later after Melnick scores a huge contract writing for a network and Bones comes calling, asking for Melnick's help writing a sitcom based on the comedian's own life (his only other prospect is a role as a sitcom Eskimo). Melnick, who is grappling with his success and desperately struggling to write something meaningful of his own, turns Bones down, a snub that sets off a crazy chain reaction that results in a Hummer parked in the living room of Melnick's posh manse followed by a classic cops-and-robbers run for the border. Greenland keeps his foot firmly on the gas, and the book's pace is fast, furious and fun. The author slows down enough along the way to expound intelligently on topics ranging from self-knowledge to "the anxiety of affluence," but the pace of this raucous thrill ride never slackens. FYI: Film rights have been sold to Sony, with David Mamet set to helm. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
Life on the road has become all but unbearable for aging hipster comedian Frank Bones. Relegated to playing ever-smaller clubs in backwater towns since he pointed a loaded gun at a heckler, he is beginning to think his salvation lies in television. His devoted agent, convinced that Frank is a gifted comic, gets him a deal, but there's a slight hitch--Frank has to play an Eskimo. He becomes convinced that the script will only work if it's penned by his old friend Lloyd Melnick, now a big-shot TV writer. Lloyd, however, increasingly disillusioned by the crushing banality of network television, has decided to write a novel. With gleeful insider knowledge, TV and film writer Greenland sends up the conventions of the business, taking potshots at trophy wives, exorbitant salaries, palatial estates, and, most especially, comedy writers. Employing both broad strokes (a vengeful Frank drives a yellow Hummer through Lloyd's living room) and polished, extremely funny one-liners, Greenland takes readers on an entertaining, behind-the-scenes tour of sitcoms and their socially maladroit, dyspeptic creators. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
"Mr. Greenland writes beautifully. His book is a stitch."


Book Description
A hysterically scathing first novel about ambition and its discontents.

Frank Bones is a self-destructive, take-no-prisoners, bad boy comic whose recent stage stunt with a firearm has cost him his audience and his bookings. Back at the bottom rung, Frank has no choice but to take his gigs where he can get them until, by virtue of a Hollywood miracle, he gets a call from his manager. A network has offered Frank his own sitcom, but there's only one problem with this long-awaited shot at success: Frank has to play an Eskimo, and ride an animatronic walrus.

Desperate, Frank calls on Lloyd Melnick, a long lost acquaintance whose position on the smash hit The Fleishman Show has made him the hottest comedy writer in town-even though he has never actually written a single episode. If Lloyd signs on as the head writer, Frank can have any kind of show he wants. But Lloyd is tired of his gilded trappings-the network job, the Brentwood mansion-and his social-climbing wife has left him mystified and unmoored. He would trade it all in for just a sliver of Frank's notorious recklessness or artistic integrity. When Lloyd turns Frank down, the consequences involve a crashed Hummer, corrupt police officers, enraged ex-husbands, sultry bartenders, and high-speed chases to Mexico and back.

A brilliant satire, The Bones is a stunning debut that reveals, in all its hilarity and ache, the dark heart of comedy.



About the Author
Seth Greenland is an award-winning playwright. He has also written extensively for film and television. This is his first novel.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Frank Bones is a self-destructive, take-no-prisoners, bad-boy comic whose recent stage stunt with a firearm has nearly cost him his career. After more than twenty years of performing, Frank is back at the bottom rung again, doing bad club dates and depressing college gigs." "Then, by virtue of a Hollywood miracle, Frank is offered the starring role in a new sitcom. Nearly broke, and with a young wannabe starlet girlfriend who's getting tired of his substance abuse and infidelity, he finds the offer almost too good to be true. And it is. On the sitcom Frank is slated to play an Eskimo and ride an animatronic walrus. For a man who's prided himself on being a rock-'n'-roll-style comedian, it seems like it can't get worse." "Desperate to capitalize on the network's offer but wanting to con them into doing a show about his own life, Frank calls on Lloyd Melnick, a long-lost acquaintance whose position on the smash hit The Fleishman Show has made him the hottest comedy writer in town - even though he never wrote a single episode. If Lloyd signs on, Frank can have any kind of show he wants. But Lloyd is tired of his gilded trappings - the million-dollar network job, the Brentwood mansion - and his ruthless, social-climbing wife has left him timid and emasculated." Hungry for artistic integrity, Lloyd turns Frank down. But Frank refuses to accept no for an answer. As he doggedly pursues Lloyd, their worlds collide, until there's no going back...not with a crashed Hummer in the living room, an enraged bounty hunter, a sultry bartender, and one of the strangest high-speed chases to Mexico ever seen.

FROM THE CRITICS

Janet Maslin - The New York Times

The Bones takes its best turns as the balance of power between Lloyd and Frank undergoes various shifts. Once Frank was the alpha male; then he became a near-supplicant; next he spins so far out of control that he becomes the answer to Lloyd's creative conundrums. Throughout the book, hilariously, Lloyd has been trying to stretch his talents by writing the kind of prose that compares the color of sunsets to pineapples. Now he becomes mindful of "The Great Gatsby" - which, in this environment, is "the well-known novel in which a circumspect man attempts to plumb the depths of an audacious one." Lloyd's stab at playing Nick Carraway to Frank's Gatsby is the book's most diabolical touch.

Michael Schaub - The Washington Post

It takes a fairly manic imagination to come up with an animatronic walrus in the first place, and it takes real talent -- and something like compassion -- to get the reader to care about the guy who's riding it. The Bones is not a perfect novel, but Greenland has serious skills.

The New Yorker

When Frank Bones and Lloyd Melnick first meet, in New York, Bones is a hot comedian, and Melnick an admiring young profile writer at an alternative weekly. Years later, in L.A., Bones’s career has tanked, and Melnick, now a television writer, has a twelve-million-dollar contract with a network that happens also to be offering the eclipsed comic a role as an Eskimo in a sitcom set in the Arctic. Melnick’s success has made him just as miserable and insecure as oblivion has made Bones. He longs to be a “real” writer but can’t make headway on a novel. The plot follows the two men as their paths cross in increasingly violent circumstances. Though many of the book’s targets—S.U.V.s, feng shui, Restoration Hardware—feel familiar, Greenland, having worked on the HBO series “Arliss,” clearly knows the culture he’s sending up.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Meet Frank Bones, the comedian's comedian. His smart, in-your-face, insulting style of stand-up comedy has given him a relatively successful career on the club circuit, but he has never managed to make that shift into mainstream entertainment. As if by a miracle, a new TV network offers him his own sitcom. The catch is that they want Frank to play an Eskimo sent on wild adventures, riding a giant walrus across the frozen tundra. The author takes every opportunity to satirize the glitz and glam of Hollywood and provides skilled characterizations of everyone, from empty-headed pretty boys to social-climbing wives. His over-the-top characters will make readers both laugh and think. Even the Bones, womanizing, drug-using jerk that he is, comes off as surprisingly likable through the quick wit and patter he brings to every scene. In a last-ditch effort to reach success on his own terms, he calls Lloyd Melnick, an old acquaintance who has just come off a run as a writer on the massive hit The Fleishman Show, to pitch the idea of a sitcom based on himself. But Melnick is burned out and turns him down. The Bones's anger sends him spiraling out of control and on a frenzied trip involving corrupt cops, murder, running the border into Mexico, and, yes, even a love subplot. The man's energy takes this funny, exciting story into a surprisingly moving conclusion about dreams, desire, and finally growing up.-Matthew L. Moffett, Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews