Glasgow Phillips published his debut novel Tuscaloosa at the tender age of twenty-four. The results were disastrous: encouraging reviews, translations, a paperback sale, a film option, and a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford. But over the next two years, as Phillips's second novel unraveled and freelance journalism assignments ended in humiliation, a horrible, secret thought took hold in him: perhaps, just possibly, whatever talent he had was of the kind that would never be more than promise. Washed up as a "real" writer before he was thirty, Phillips went to Los Angeles and formed a company with his best childhood friend, Jason McHugh, independent producer of Cannibal The Musical and Orgazmo. "Precisely what the company would do was somewhat beside the point," he writes. "We were friends who wanted to do something together. In other times or others circumstances we might have started a magazine, a social club, a religion, or a gang. It was the late 1990s, so we started an Internet company." The Royal Nonesuch is the story of Phillips's roller-coaster ride through the twisted world of underground Hollywood and the fun house of the Internet during the boom. He builds a hilarious and poignant memoir, in the tradition of Augusten Burroughs and Sean Wilsey, from tales of promise and failure, family and madness, friendship and redemption, fame and infamy, and good old-fashioned hustling. This is a remarkable book, a brilliant portrait of a generation in all its foolish glory.
Industry Reviews
"Hollywood drops the soap and Glasgow Phillips scores a bull's-eye in this hilarious and frighteningly accurate memoir about coming-of-age on the gamy side of Tinseltown." -- Mark Haskell "This is the best book I've read about being in your twenties and trying to figure out what to do with your life, and that's not just because I'm in it. Something this funny shouldn't also be this profound; after laughing, crying, and cheering the cast, all I wanted was a bigger part." -- Matt Stone "The Royal Nonesuch hits so close to home that laughing at Mr. Phillips and laughing at yourself are often one and the same. Occasionally gut-wrenching, often hysterical, and always illuminating, Mr. Phillips's prose remains remarkably assured throughout. Even when his life choices are, well, not." -- Neel Shah "This is the book you're looking for. It's inspiring, intelligent, funny, honest, and a triumph over evil. I usually can't get past page 10 in a memoir, but The Royal Nonesuch had me from the start and never let me down. Glasgow Phillips is the real deal, a badass who actually knows how to write." -- Arthur Bradford "Glasgow Phillips has harnessed vast observational and comedic talents for the purpose of waste, waste, and thrice waste--till now! The Royal Nonesuch is both a self-reckoning and a generational one, and Phillips fills this ridiculous, entertaining, crazy-ass morality tale with proof that he's a fancy pants literary type after all. Hooray!" -- Sean Wilsey "The Royal Nonesuch is very funny, far too real for comfort, and even, finally, life-affirming. To borrow a phrase from Mr. Phillips, reading this book is like getting kicked in the clams with a clown shoe. You double over, not sure whether you're laughing or crying, and then you want to kick the clown back, in the clams. That course of action won't be available to all readers, but I have Mr. Phillips's address, and I'm on my way now to the clown she store." -- Dave Eggers
