Sweet Smell of Success

Book excerpt: The screenwriter behind North by Northwest and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? skewers show business in these fifteen tales. In Sweet Smell of Success, the main novelette of this collection,Lehman scathingly depicts the dark side of success through the twisted relationship of Sid Wallace, an ambitious publicist, and Harvey Hunsucker, a powerful and vindictive gossip columnist, fashioned after Walter Winchell. As scandals are manufactured and reputations ruined for sport, the story spirals downward toward one last, savage act of revenge. As brutally honest as Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust, Sweet Smell of Success is one of the most enduring and provocative stories in the literature of show business. In The Comedian, one of America’s most beloved funny men is about to become a television superstar, but a large banana peel awaits him. Meanwhile, the remaining stories dissect the entertainment industry in a way that only Lehman could do . . . Both Sweet Smell of Success and The Comedian were adapted for film. Sweet Smell of Success was a 1957 film starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, while The Comedian was a TV movie starring Mickey Rooney and Edmund O’Brien. “Sweet Smell of Success is a corrosive valentine to New York, embracing its energy and its clashing ambitions.” —Sam Kashner, Vanity Fair “Siddown. Listen to these. They are not Lindy’s cheesecake or long on kisses and schmaltz. But if you like prose pale as a shark’s belly, they do just fine.” —Kirkus Reviews