The main attraction of Budd Schulberg's The Disenchanted is the potboiler-type slow-motion train wreck that is the main character's life. Modeled on Scott Fitzgerald, Manley Halliday is pretty much doomed from the first sip of champagne on an airplane trip from Los Angeles to New York. But the gradual disintegration is handled skillfully, producing in the reader a mounting sense of dread. If it did nothing else, the novel would be worthwhile for that, but Schulberg also interweaves flashback sections that show the writer at the height of his fame in the Twenties. The sad story is made even sadder by the fact that an incomplete manuscript left behind shows not only that Halliday had not lost his touch, but that he was onto something better than ever.
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