Bruce Jay Friedman (at least the one in Lucky Bruce) appears to be the quintessential self-absorbed, self-deprecating smart Jewish guy from the Bronx. Reading his memoir is like watching a Woody Allen film festival--back-to-back stories of lust, overbearing mothering, serial psychoanalysis, namedropping, boot-strapping literary success... and very funny lines.
Friedman did not achieve his mother's ambitious plan for his career in "theatrical public relations," nor her second choice, medicine ("Why someone would choose to become a writer--and not a dermatologist--mystified her."). Instead, his career launched from the dark corridors of Magazine Management Co. (where he put the finishing touches on prison, war and soft-porn stories for magazines such as Swank and Male) to seeing his stories in the New Yorker; publishing his first of eight novels, Stern, with Simon & Schuster, and then producing a portfolio of plays and screenplays that made him some money, made him a wide circle of connected friends and briefly made Natalie Wood his secretary.
Friedman kicked around New York and Hollywood, where he hit some home runs with Splash and his Lonely Guy franchise of books and movies. He has stories to tell about everyone he met along the way: literary heavyweights Mailer, Heller and Puzo; Law & Order's secret weapon, Jerry Orbach; movie lions Woody Allen and Warren Beatty... he knew them all. But at heart he was a writer. "Los Angeles was a toy store. The real world, i.e., the literary world, was in Manhattan." --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.