Neha Patil (Editor)

Looking for Mr. Goodbar

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Country
  
United States

Publication date
  
1975

Pages
  
284 (Cloth)

Originally published
  
1975

Page count
  
284 (Cloth)

Genres
  
Fiction, Novel

3.6/5
Goodreads

Language
  
English

Media type
  
Print (Cloth; Paper)

Preceded by
  
Any Minute I Can Split

Author
  
Judith Perelman Rossner

Publisher
  
Simon & Schuster

Looking for Mr. Goodbar t0gstaticcomimagesqtbnANd9GcRdvM4yiy46JyuaM4

Adaptations
  
Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977)

Similar
  
Judith Perelman Rossner books, Fiction books

Looking for mr goodbar hd trailer


Looking for Mr. Goodbar is a novel by American writer Judith Rossner. Published in 1975, the book—a "stunning psychological study of a woman's passive complicity in her own death" —won critical acclaim and was a #1 New York Times best seller.

Contents

Disco music film looking for mr goodbar 1977


Plot Summary

Theresa Dunn, a young woman living in New York City, leads something of a "double life": by day she is a devoted schoolteacher, but by night she cruises singles bars. Eventually, just as she's trying to make a new start, Terry is murdered by a young drifter she has just met and invited home.

Background

By 1973, having published three novels, Judith Rossner was a writer of "impeccable literary credentials." Invited by Nora Ephron to contribute to a special women's issue of Esquire magazine, Rossner wrote an article about a real-life murder which had sparked her interest, that of schoolteacher Roseann Quinn who had been brutally slain in January 1973 by a man she had purportedly picked up in a singles bar. In the end, Esquire, fearing legal ramifications, declined to publish the article, so Rossner decided to write a novel instead.

Reception

Looking for Mr. Goodbar was published by Simon & Schuster on June 2, 1975, to rapturous reviews. Carol Eisen Rinzler, in The New York Times, said the book was "a complex and chilling portrait of a woman's descent into hell... full of insight and intelligence and illumination." Time magazine wrote, "it is a rare kind of book: both a compelling 'page turner' and a superior roman à clef." Newsweek found the book to be a “hard, fast, frightening read.”

Looking for Mr. Goodbar was also a commercial blockbuster: on June 22, 1975, it entered the New York Times best seller list, and would remain there for 36 weeks, three of those weeks at #1. It sold over four million copies, becoming the fourth highest-selling novel of the year.

Adaptations

Paramount Pictures purchased film rights to the novel for $250,000. The film, written and directed by Richard Brooks, was released in 1977, and starred Diane Keaton, Tuesday Weld, William Atherton, Richard Gere, and Tom Berenger. The film received mixed reviews, but was a success at the box office, earning $22.5 million (the equivalent of $86.9 million in 2016). It received two Academy Award nominations: best supporting actress (Tuesday Weld) and best cinematography (by William A. Fraker). Rossner herself "detested" the film, but did praise the performance of Diane Keaton.

In 2012, the novel was adapted as Goodbar, a "staged concept album" by the band Bambi and the performing arts group Waterwell. It was presented at The Public Theater in New York as part of the Under the Radar Festival.

References

Looking for Mr. Goodbar Wikipedia