Ethan Hawke turns his acting experience – and past infidelities – into brilliant fiction
FINALLY, a novel about the travails of a successful white guy! What could pull the heartstrings of our afflicted world tighter than a story of brief, emotional setback suffered by a handsome movie star?
Ethan Hawke has got a lot of nerve.
But he’s also got a lot of talent.
The actor and director, who made his screen debut at 15, has published several books during his acclaimed Hollywood career, and he recently produced and starred in a spectacular TV adaptation of James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird.
But Hawke is also known as the man who cheated on Uma Thurman and offered loutish excuses about the sexual needs of great men like Martin Luther King jr, John F Kennedy and himself.
Now, some 15 years after all that cosmic embarrassment, Hawke has published a novel called A Bright Ray of Darkness. It’s about a young movie star who got caught cheating on his wife. This recycled gossip is tiresome, but what’s most irritating about A Bright Ray of Darkness is that it’s really good. If you can ignore the author’s motive for creating such a sensitive and endearing cad, you’ll find a novel that explores the demands of acting and the delusions of manhood with tremendous verve and insight.
A Bright Ray of Darkness opens during a storm of negative media coverage that erupts when the young heartthrob William Harding is spotted cavorting with a woman – not his rock star wife – in Cape Town. William knows he’s an international pariah, the poster man-child for infidelity.
He is determined to tell the truth and shame the devil, but the teller of the tale always holds the reins of our sympathy, which may explain Hawke’s decision to narrate this story in the first person. As much as everybody around William regards him as a royal ass, we – his intimate confessors – know that he’s a hopeless romantic, hurt and confused, baffled that love can turn sour so quickly. Now, at the ripe old age of 32, William must pull himself together, stop crying and grow up.
Even harder, he’ll have to do that personal reconstruction while making his debut appearance on Broadway. Before his marriage publicly exploded, he’d signed on to play Hotspur in a lavish production of Shakespeare’s Henry IV.
