Most Popular Books by Jerry Stahl

In this highly acclaimed novel, the author of Permanent Midnight channels fallen early-Hollywood star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. Fatty tells his own story of success, addiction, and a precipitous fall from grace after being framed for a brutal crime-a national media scandal that set the precedent for those so familiar today.

A searing confessional infused with the darkest humour, Permanent Midnight chronicles the opiated abyss of a Hollywood screenwriter and his formidable climb into society. Made into a major motion picture starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, Permanent Midnight is revered by critics and an ever-growing cult of devoted readers as one of the most compelling contemporary memoirs. From the author of the hugely popular I, Fatty.

“Often brilliant, always compelling.” — Pittsburgh Tribune From acclaimed and controversial author Jerry Stahl comes one of the most vividly subversive, savagely funny, explosive novels yet unleashed in our tender century. Pain Killers is a violent and mind-wrenching masterpiece in the Gonzo Noir style that has earned Jerry Stahl his legion of avid fans. For those who enjoy the works of Chuck Palahniuk, Terry Southern, and Hunter S Thompson—as well as Stahl’s own Permanent Midnight, I Fatty, Perv–A Love Story, and Plainclothes Naked—Pain Killers is sure to please.

Set in 1970, in the last, dark days of hippiedom, Perv -- A Love Story is the saga of Bobby Stark, a sixteen-year-old batch of desire and angst struggling to stay sane in a world gone Day-Glo. As the novel opens, Bobby loses his virginity in a drug-addled tryst with a one-armed barber''s daughter. For his sins he''s thrown out of school and dispatched to live with his mom, a festive electro shock aficionado, whose condo he flees to track down Michelle, the gorgeously damaged, lasped Hare Krishna-ette he''s adored since kindergarten. Like the rest of their generation, the couple hit the road for California, only to be picked up in a hell-fueled Lincoln by a pair of Bad Hippies -- Meat and Varnish -- smacked-out spiritual cousins to Charles Manson. From here the trip gets vicious.... Already an underground classic, Perv-A Love Story is relentlessly twisted, sexy, and savagely funny literary excursion, a novel of doomed youth in the era when Flower Power had begun to wilt.

Lloyd has a particular set of skills. He writes the small print for prescription drugs, marital aids, and incontinence products. The clients present him with a list of possible side effects. His job is "to recite and minimize"—sometimes by just saying them really fast and other times by finding the language that can render them acceptable. The results are ingenious. The methods diabolical. Lloyd has a habit, too. He cops smack during coffee breaks at his new job writing copy for Christian Swingles, an online dating service for the faithful. He finds a precarious balance between hackwork and heroin until he encounters Nora, a mysterious and troubled young woman, a Sylvia Plath with tattoos and implants, who asks for his help. Lloyd falls swiftly in love, but Nora bestows her affections at a cost. Before Lloyd clears his head from the fog of romance, he finds himself complicit in Nora''s grand scheme to horrify the world and exact revenge on those who poison the populace in order to sell them the cure.

Old Guy Dad recounts the adventures of a man who, in the proverbial autumn of his years, or at least the pre pre-autumn, discovers his girlfriend is pregnant. And having a baby. Whereupon hijinks, cosmic and mundane, ensues. A collection of celebrated columns on The Rumpus with new material and never-before-told tales, Old Guy Dad is Jerry Stahl at his finest and most domestic.

In a wildly careening plot that can only be described as crack noir, two pipeheads accidentally steal a photo of George W. Bush''s presidential package and decide to blackmail the Republican Party. Before the crack-crazed thieves can follow through, however, gorgeous, whip-smart Nurse Tina, who''s just offed her husband with a bowl of Drano-laced Lucky Charms, absconds with the goods. When Manny Rubert, a scarred ex-junkie turned codeine-popping detective, is called in to investigate the "foamer" hubby''s untimely demise, love hits him like a wrench to the head. Soon Manny and Tina are making plans of their own for the presidential pie -- and for their future together. But the meddling police chiefs and motel room sex-change surgeons of the world just won''t leave them alone. And then there are those killer crackheads, still out there and closing in....

Now in paperback and featuring an interview with Ben Stiller; a guided group tour to concentration camps allows Stahl to confront personal and historical demons with both deep despair and savage humor IN SEPTEMBER 2016, JERRY STAHL was feeling nervous on the eve of a two-week trip across Poland and Germany. But it was not just the stops at Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Dachau that gave him anxiety. It was the fact that he would be traveling with two dozen strangers, by bus. In a tour group. And he was not a tour-group kind of guy. The decision to visit Holocaust-world did not come easy. Stahl''s lifelong depression at an all-time high, his career and personal life at an all-time low, he had the idea to go on a trip where the despair he was feeling—out-of-control sadness, regret, and fear, not just for himself, but for the entire United States—would be appropriate. And where was despair more appropriate than the land of the Six Million? Seamlessly weaving global and personal history, through the lens of Stahl''s own bent perspective, Nein, Nein, Nein! stands out as a triumph of strange-o reporting, a tale that takes us from gang polkas to tourrash to the truly disturbing snack bar at Auschwitz. Strap in for a raw, surreal, and redemptively hilarious trip. Get on the bus.

From the bestselling author of the memoir "Permanent Midnight" and the novel "I, Fatty" comes a long-awaited collection of short stories. Stahls perverse yet often touching tales plumb the depths of eccentric romance, sex-starved adolescence, mid-life crisis, and family dysfunction.

Featuring interviews with Chris Hardwick on The Nerdist Podcast and Marc Maron on WTF with Marc Maron Bad Sex On Speed is a savage, careening, hyper-real nightmare of a novel, taking us to the depths of Amphetamine America. Told with no concession to traditional narrative, in the voices of those in the grips and on the fringes, the stories that emerge are at once devastating, hysterical, and--perhaps most terrifying of all--going on all around you, all the time. Stahl digs deep into the psyche of the most demented and dispossessed among us, returning with a vision so unsparing that those not prepared to experience the screaming depths of speed psychosis up close and on the page should back slowly away and return to their lives unscathed.

Mezzanotte per sempre è una bruciante confessione. Ripercorre la caduta nell’abisso delle droghe di uno sceneggiatore di Hollywood e la sua formidabile ascesa nella società. Trasformato anche in un film interpretato da Ben Stiller e Owen Wilson, Mezzanotte per sempre è un classico venerato dai critici e adorato dai lettori come uno dei memoir più emblematici della nostra contemporaneità. Un libro sincero, spasmodico, esilarante, che ci avvicina a un uomo in bilico fra il proprio personaggio e l’impossibilità di essere semplicemente quel che è, spogliato dei suoi mille talenti e delle sue brillanti carriere parallele da criminale, tossico, padre e sceneggiatore di successo. Una vita fragorosa e stantia in cui la mezzanotte non passa mai, ripetendosi fino alla noia in questa decadente Los Angeles di fine millennio.

Roscoe «Fatty» Arbuckle triunfó primero en el vodevil y después en el nuevo medio cinematográfico En su época, a lo largo del segundo decenio de 1900, Fatty fue más popular que Chaplin; se convirtió en el primer actor de la pantalla que ganaba un millón d

Jerry Stahl racconta le avventure di un uomo che nel proverbiale autunno dei suoi anni o, quantomeno, nel pre autunno, scopre che la sua ragazza è incinta. E che diventerà padre. Nuovamente. Soltanto che questa volta vuole riuscirci nel modo giusto: senza eroina, e con un sacco di mal di schiena in più. Con questo libro Stahl torna a offrirci il suo stile confessionale, autobiografico e sporco, quello che ha contribuito ad alimentarne il culto a partire da Mezzanotte a vita. Questa volta, però, affronta un argomento ancora più terrificante del bucarsi in strada, allucinante come gli alieni pelosi che stanno graffiando alla tua porta, e più sincero del cagarsi nei pantaloni durante le crisi per la disintossicazione: la paternità. Stronzate che ti capitano quando non muori giovane racconta questa avventura in una serie di scenette cupamente comiche, un vero calcio nelle palle al sentimentalismo sdolcinato che spesso affligge i libri sulle gioie di essere genitore. Per chi non lo conoscesse ancora, questo libro è il perfetto wormhole per avere accesso nelluniverso Stahl.

Petit gros malheureux de condition modeste, Rosco "Fatty" Arbuckle fut la première grande star du cinéma muet. Rapidement adulé, ivre de gloire et d''argent, il est accusé à tort dans un scandale de moeurs et connaît une impitoyable descente aux enfers. Pourquoi un tel lynchage médiatique ? Figure emblématique des débuts d''Hollywood, jouet de forces qui le dépassent, Fatty est finalement victime du conflit de valeurs qui déchire l''Amérique nouvelle.

Ecrit en deux semaines dans une chambre d''hôtel parisienne, Speed Fiction, cauchemar hyperréaliste ne faisant aucune concession aux modes narratifs traditionnels, respire le vécu. La prose de Jerry Stahl porte l''empreinte des maîtres de la beat generation : Kerouac pour la poésie et la spontanéité, Burroughs pour l''ironie grinçante à base de substances prohibées.

" On pourrait dire que le succès m''a détruit. On pourrait dire que j''ai détruit le succès. Durant les années quatre-vingt je me suis jeté dans une spirale narcotique qui m''a entraîné des magazines aux films pornos jusqu''au monde ultra-lucratif de la télévision. D''une certaine façon je passais pour un jeune professionnel ambitieux. Mais ce statut - jeune marié et nouveau riche - ne reflétait que la partie visible d''une vie qui dissimulait une réalité plus tourmentée, faite de drogue, d''addiction, de trahison, d''échec et de crime. Comment je suis tombé dans ce gouffre, et comment j''en suis ressorti, ce sont des questions dont je traquerai les réponses d''un bout à l''autre de ce bouquin ".

Qui a envie de se retrouver à San Quentin, la pire prison de Californie ? L’ex-flic ex-drogué d’A poil en civil (Rivages/Noir no 647) Manny Rupert, désormais séparé de sa dangereuse épouse Tina, n’a pas vraiment le choix : pour espérer ne pas se faire expulser de son taudis, il doit gagner la confiance d’un allemand de quatre-vingt-dix-sept ans, détenu, apparemment gâteux et qui prétend être Joseph Mengele, ou « l’Ange de la Mort », le médecin sadique qui conduisait des expériences sur les Juifs à Auschwitz, et qui ne serait donc pas décédé en 1979 au Brésil.Le vieil homme, incarcéré suite à un banal accident de voiture, n’est pas discret : il proclame partout qu’il est un grand scientifique et que l’Amérique corrompue et décadente ferait mieux non seulement de reconnaître ses mérites, mais même de s’inspirer de son travail. Cerise sur le gâteau : le bon docteur semblerait ne pas avoir complètement renoncé à ses pratiques. Mais qui écoute les délires de prisonniers, surtout lorsqu’ils ont atteint un âge aussi vénérable ? Harry Zell, le mystérieux employeur de Manny, qui veut vérifier l’identité du nonagénaire afin sans doute de déchaîner sur lui une juste vengeance ? Les membres des groupuscules d’extrême droite qui pullulent en prison, emmenés par un juif culturiste pour le moins déroutant ? Les autorités pénitentiaires, voire des agents du renseignement ? Affublé d’une couverture désastreuse – animer un atelier de parole sur les dangers de la toxicomanie auprès de prisonniers descendus particulièrement bas - Manny s’engloutit à son corps défendant dans l’ineffable univers carcéral californien, puits insondable de cynisme trash, d’humour sordide et de déchéance morale, sur fond de conspiration eugéniste et d’abus de narcotiques.

"Writers On The Edge" offers a range of essays, memoirs and poetry written by majorcontemporary authors who bring fresh insight into the dark world of addiction, from drugs and alcohol, to sex, gambling and food. Editors Diana M. Raab and James Brown have assembled an array of talented and courageous writers who share their stories with heartbreaking honesty as they share their obsessions as well as the awe-inspiring power of hope and redemption. "Open to any piece in this collection, and the scalding, unflinching, overwhelming truths within will shine light on places most people never look. Anyone who reads this book, be they users or used, will put it down changed. And when they raise their eyes from the very last page, the world they see may be redeemed, as well." --Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight CONTRIBUTORS: Frederick & Steven Barthelme, Kera Bolonik, Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Maud Casey, Anna David, Denise Duhamel, B.H. Fairchild, Ruth Fowler, David HuddlePerie Longo, Gregory Orr, Victoria Patterson, Molly Peacock, Scott Russell Sanders, Stephen Jay Schwartz, Linda Gray Sexton, Sue William Silverman, Chase Twichell, andRachel Yoder About the Editors Diana M. Raab, an award-winning memoirist and poet, is author of six booksincluding "Healing With Words" and "Regina''s Closet." She''s an advocate of thehealing power of writing and teaches nation-wide workshops and in the UCLAExtension Writers'' Program. James Brown, a recovering alcoholic and addict, is the author of the memoirs, "The Los Angeles Diaries" and "This River." He is Professor of English in the MFAProgram in Creative Writing at California State University, San Bernardino. From the Reflections of America Series Modern History Press www.ModernHistoryPress.com SEL006000 Self-Help: Substance Abuse & Addictions - Alcoholism SEL003000 Self-Help: Adult Children of Alcoholics PSY038000 Psychology: Psychopathology - Addiction