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God of Speed
Hughes was one of the stranges and most significant figures of the 20th aviator, film mogul, serial womaniser, billionaire, political meddler, drug addict, recluse. A giant and extraordinary leap of information into the fractured mind of power, fear, greed, yearning and addiction, this is the story of his wild ride.
275 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
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259 people want to read
About the author
Luke Davies
29 books156 followersLuke Davies is an Australian writer of novels and poetry. He has published two novels, Isabelle the Navigator and the cult bestseller Candy, which was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Awards in 1998. A film version of Candy, starring Heath Ledger, was released in 2006 and won the AFI for Best Adapted Screenplay. His novel God of Speed, about the life of Howard Hughes, is due for release in April 2008.
Information / http://www.hlamgt.com.au/
Davies has published five books of poetry, including Running With Light, which was the winner of the Judith Wright Poetry Prize 2000, and Totem, which won the 2004 Age Book of the Year Award. He was also awarded the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal for Poetry in 2004. He has completed several residencies around the world, including at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre for the Arts, Ireland, The Australia Centre, Chiang Mai, Thailand, the Centre d'Art
Information / http://www.hlamgt.com.au/
Davies has published five books of poetry, including Running With Light, which was the winner of the Judith Wright Poetry Prize 2000, and Totem, which won the 2004 Age Book of the Year Award. He was also awarded the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal for Poetry in 2004. He has completed several residencies around the world, including at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre for the Arts, Ireland, The Australia Centre, Chiang Mai, Thailand, the Centre d'Art
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
June 22, 2008
Luke Davies is the sort of writer that skips past the surface of his subjects, moving deeper into that underlying subconscious place of pain and fear. His latest novel takes on the over-wrought subject of Howard Hughes. In his heyday, Hughes was America’s biggest 20th century icon, still believed by many to be one of the greatest geniuses that America ever had.
His impact on the world was huge and varied, touching on the movie industry and Hollywood, aviation, engineering, biomedical research, and even espionage and warfare. His life has been the subject of numerous films, books, and studies, not only for his accomplishments, but also because of the extraordinary split between his early life when he is visible everywhere, and his later life, when his is almost entirely invisible.
Taking on Hughes’ life is no small task for a novelist, especially for a writer so used to working in the micro sphere of poetry. Davies is up to it. His portrait remains something entirely new – a fiction that takes on the contours of Hughes’ life, but which goes deeper into the heart of this invented man to find everyman.
The book opens just prior to the “final decline.” It’s June 1973, where a 68-year-old Hughes prepares to fly again after 13 years of reclusive dormancy. The book stays at that point, tracking Hughes’ sleepless, drug-ridden thoughts through the night as lies, waiting for his friend, confidante and ultimately biographer, Jack Real, to wake and accompany him on his flights.
After those flights, Hughes fractured his hip and remained bedridden from that point until his death three years later. In his thoughts — feverish and strange — he flies through his life reflecting, refracting, and moving through those moments in such an intimate, personal way that the reader almost comes to understand him.
It’s not all warm. Davies' Hughes is self-centred, moving through sex and drugs with a hunger that is as ugly as it is damaging. The name dropping is almost irritating from the intensity of his relationship with Katherine Hepburn, through Ava Gardner, Billie Dove, Ginger Rogers, Bette Davis, Lana Turner, Faith Domergue, and Susan Hayward - all treated with a hungry misogyny that ended up being a kind of laundry list of famous legs, vaginas, and skin, devoid of the person within the body parts.
Hughes' hunger can’t be satisfied by these women, who he catalogues by the type of sex he could have with them, anymore than it could by the drugs he later used in the same way. Instead of Ginger, Bette, and Lana, there was Emperin, Valium, and Ritalin replacing that hot, fast hit of success, of a blockbuster completed, the roar of an engine beneath the legs, of making huge amounts of money.
Placed in the uncomfortable role of Hughes’ confidante, the reader is made to understand this fictional Hughes, from his earliest memories of his mother’s germ fears, to his latest ones of infirmary and addiction. There is an honesty here that is painful, horrible at times, but also, and mainly because of Davies’ poetic skill, beautiful.
The grand scale of Hughes’ life is all on the outside. On the inside, where the reader sits at a nightmare ridden bedside, Hughes is still that little boy, afraid of germs, and unable to breathe in, but we can still hear the outside world. Despite the small-scale scene, Davies manages to provide the big picture of Hughes’ world. We have his real neurotic memos that give us a sense of how he might be presenting to those around him.
These are disturbing instructions on how many Kleenexes should be used to open the door of his cabinet, or how to “prevent the backflow of germs” in sending flowers on the death of Bob Gross, who ran Lockheed. The way in which Davies handles the relationship between inner world and outer; between Hughes’ schemes and his obsessive-compulsive implosion without ever leaving his setting of a single night, and single bed, is masterful.
Though Davies’ Hughes isn’t exactly a likable character, the intimacy is so striking and the intensity of the portrait so great that Hughes becomes someone entirely familiar. Not so much the grand aviator with all the superlatives of his status: richest, fastest, most inventive, but instead, a man like any other, pursued by demons and running hard to find a way to live through them. He succeeds and he fails, as indeed, we all do on one level or another. This is a remarkable fusion of prose and poetry, well worth reading, regardless of whether or not the subject matter is of interest to you.
His impact on the world was huge and varied, touching on the movie industry and Hollywood, aviation, engineering, biomedical research, and even espionage and warfare. His life has been the subject of numerous films, books, and studies, not only for his accomplishments, but also because of the extraordinary split between his early life when he is visible everywhere, and his later life, when his is almost entirely invisible.
Taking on Hughes’ life is no small task for a novelist, especially for a writer so used to working in the micro sphere of poetry. Davies is up to it. His portrait remains something entirely new – a fiction that takes on the contours of Hughes’ life, but which goes deeper into the heart of this invented man to find everyman.
The book opens just prior to the “final decline.” It’s June 1973, where a 68-year-old Hughes prepares to fly again after 13 years of reclusive dormancy. The book stays at that point, tracking Hughes’ sleepless, drug-ridden thoughts through the night as lies, waiting for his friend, confidante and ultimately biographer, Jack Real, to wake and accompany him on his flights.
After those flights, Hughes fractured his hip and remained bedridden from that point until his death three years later. In his thoughts — feverish and strange — he flies through his life reflecting, refracting, and moving through those moments in such an intimate, personal way that the reader almost comes to understand him.
It’s not all warm. Davies' Hughes is self-centred, moving through sex and drugs with a hunger that is as ugly as it is damaging. The name dropping is almost irritating from the intensity of his relationship with Katherine Hepburn, through Ava Gardner, Billie Dove, Ginger Rogers, Bette Davis, Lana Turner, Faith Domergue, and Susan Hayward - all treated with a hungry misogyny that ended up being a kind of laundry list of famous legs, vaginas, and skin, devoid of the person within the body parts.
Hughes' hunger can’t be satisfied by these women, who he catalogues by the type of sex he could have with them, anymore than it could by the drugs he later used in the same way. Instead of Ginger, Bette, and Lana, there was Emperin, Valium, and Ritalin replacing that hot, fast hit of success, of a blockbuster completed, the roar of an engine beneath the legs, of making huge amounts of money.
Placed in the uncomfortable role of Hughes’ confidante, the reader is made to understand this fictional Hughes, from his earliest memories of his mother’s germ fears, to his latest ones of infirmary and addiction. There is an honesty here that is painful, horrible at times, but also, and mainly because of Davies’ poetic skill, beautiful.
The grand scale of Hughes’ life is all on the outside. On the inside, where the reader sits at a nightmare ridden bedside, Hughes is still that little boy, afraid of germs, and unable to breathe in, but we can still hear the outside world. Despite the small-scale scene, Davies manages to provide the big picture of Hughes’ world. We have his real neurotic memos that give us a sense of how he might be presenting to those around him.
These are disturbing instructions on how many Kleenexes should be used to open the door of his cabinet, or how to “prevent the backflow of germs” in sending flowers on the death of Bob Gross, who ran Lockheed. The way in which Davies handles the relationship between inner world and outer; between Hughes’ schemes and his obsessive-compulsive implosion without ever leaving his setting of a single night, and single bed, is masterful.
Though Davies’ Hughes isn’t exactly a likable character, the intimacy is so striking and the intensity of the portrait so great that Hughes becomes someone entirely familiar. Not so much the grand aviator with all the superlatives of his status: richest, fastest, most inventive, but instead, a man like any other, pursued by demons and running hard to find a way to live through them. He succeeds and he fails, as indeed, we all do on one level or another. This is a remarkable fusion of prose and poetry, well worth reading, regardless of whether or not the subject matter is of interest to you.
September 16, 2020
This book is nonstop fun, amusement-ride fun where you lose your belly and it's great, gritty fun you can indulge in and not feel like shit the next morning. Told from the 'speedy' point of view of Howard Hughes - aviation pioneer, film producer, sex and opioid addict supreme - it's an account of the mogul's life. Hughes is old in the telling, reminiscing about 'the good old days' before he was overcome by the obsessive compulsive disorder that would eventually imprison him. He's a huge personality, a major player in making America what it is, and though his life is often written about, in books and for the screen (I just saw Warren Beatty's portrayal: perfect), God of Speed seems to get at the heart of the man in a way not done before. I'm saying it's because of the rollicking pace that never falters, not once, moving forward and forward and forward, like the man, mirroring Hughes's appetite and grabby-ness, and oh how many women he grabs! (The Katherine Hepburn of this book is devine, by the way.) Luke Davies nailed the style of this book, and for that (and because he also wrote Candy) I think he is quite possibly a genius.
May 31, 2009
A beautiful piece of writing with a strong sense of rhythm and wonderfully paced so that the reader never loses interest in the story even if at times they may see empathy with the protagonist slipping away from them...
November 14, 2019
Luke Davies is a demigod. LOVE everything he writes. 20 pages into this and it's 5 stars.
Love the short chapters. Beautiful stuff! Hope he picks up the pen again.
Love the short chapters. Beautiful stuff! Hope he picks up the pen again.
May 26, 2016
I won a copy of this book in a Goodreads giveaway.
This is an fascinating fictionalized account of the surreal life of Howard Hughes. This book fleshes out the strange, strange man with his addictions, sexual compulsions, social ineptness, OCD and a myriad of other psychological problems. He does not make Mr. Hughes a sympathetic figure but he does make him a bit more understandable. The book is an easy read that kept me interested from start to finish.
This is an fascinating fictionalized account of the surreal life of Howard Hughes. This book fleshes out the strange, strange man with his addictions, sexual compulsions, social ineptness, OCD and a myriad of other psychological problems. He does not make Mr. Hughes a sympathetic figure but he does make him a bit more understandable. The book is an easy read that kept me interested from start to finish.
July 8, 2014
Beautiful prose, evocative imagery, imaginative and strangely suspenseful...one of my favorite books I've worked on this far. A great read for lovers of language, aviation, and...I'll just say it, sex.
May 20, 2013
Beautifully written and a well developed character. Enjoyed how I became endeared with the main character as he displayed his vulnerabilities disguised as arrogance.
January 17, 2015
A surrealist adventure into the mind of a true narcissist. Vivid and bouncy with a dash of existential horror and angst thrown in to keep you on your toes.
January 27, 2015
Started out really well, then lost momentum just past halfway...
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September 23, 2015This book was featured in the Nota Benes section of the March/April 2015 issue of World Literature Today Magazine.
See the full list of the March Nota Benes here: http://bit.ly/march15nb
See the full list of the March Nota Benes here: http://bit.ly/march15nb
January 28, 2021
The writing is beautiful but the chauvinistic character and the descriptions of sex with famous women just felt a bit yuck. Definitely an interesting read
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews