Movie Stars - Softcover

"A gutsy and unconventional approach to storytelling. Movie Stars adds a number of stellar complications to the standard-issue realist-minimalist aesthetic."
--The Rumpus

"Almost every story in Movie Stars made me laugh aloud, often in public, but what really impressed me was the sneaky simplicity of Pendarvis's language."
--Fiction Writers Review

"Every minute you are not yet reading Jack Pendarvis should be an interminable agony."
--Anthony Bourdain, author ofKitchen Confidential and Get Jiro: Blood and Sushi

"I like all of the yearning weirdos who wander through the work of Jack Pendarvis. You will like them too, because he reminds us we are all yearning weirdos, looking to the stars, movie and otherwise, for some fate and guidance. These stories are true ha ha funny, courageously strange, humane and affecting, and really, really good."
--John Hodgman, author of That Is All

"Funny, poetic, vivid, unique. Jack Pendarvis has crafted a collection of gems." --Lauren Graham

"Movie Stars is a collection of short subjects that hit like blockbusters." --Patton Oswalt

These stories are linked by humor, setting, themes and recurring characterscat lovers, murderers, gamblers, ghosts and foolsbut mostly by the movie stars, gods and goddesses who look down on us struggling mortals with a mixture of benevolence and wrath. From Scarlett Johansson to Joan Crawford, Clint Eastwood to Jerry Lewis, they represent the impossible ideals to which lesser beings turn for hope in an otherwise baffling world.