Savan, Glenn 1953-2003

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SAVAN, Glenn 1953-2003

PERSONAL:

Born December 28, 1953; died of a heart attack or stroke at his home, April 14, 2003, in Shrewsbury, MO; son of Sidney Savan (a former advertising executive; teacher at the University of Missouri). Education: Attended Webster University (St. Louis, MO) and Southern Illinois University at Carbondale; University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, M.F.A., 1982. Hobbies and other interests: Gem and mineral collecting.

CAREER:

Novelist. Worked for his father at the Savan Company (an advertising agency); waited tables.

WRITINGS:

White Palace (novel), Bantam Books (New York, NY), 1987.

Goldman's Anatomy (novel), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1993.

ADAPTATIONS:

White Palace was adapted into a motion picture starring James Spader and Susan Sarandon, Universal Pictures, 1990. Excerpts from White Palace were read by Savan for audio cassette, American Audio Prose Library, 1989; an abridged version of Goldman's Anatomy was adapted for audio cassette, read by Barry Williams, The Publishing Mills, 1993.

SIDELIGHTS:

Glenn Savan quit a job at his father's advertising agency to wait tables and write his first novel, the best-selling White Palace. Published in 1987, the book became the first title in a Bantam paperback line of fiction by young authors. The success of the novel helped it make the transition to the silver screen, with a critically acclaimed production starring James Spader and Susan Sarandon. A second book, Goldman's Anatomy, also earned strong reviews, but Savan would not live to complete his third novel. He died in 2003 after suffering from poor health much of his life. Savan had a degenerative joint condition as well as Parkinson's disease, a neurological condition causing tremors and a progressive weakening of the muscles; for a period during his childhood, he used a wheelchair and crutches. Experimental neurosurgery performed in 2001 was not successful; Savan died of a heart attack or stroke at the age of forty-nine.

White Palace revolves around the love affair between a handsome, young, widowed advertising man named Max and an older, rather uncouth waitress, Nora. They cross paths twice; the second time they are both on their way to getting drunk at a bar, and despite Max's thinly veiled contempt for the aggressive Nora, they wind up in bed together. The story that follows explores whether Max can finally overcome his grief over his departed wife and if love and lust can keep together two people with very different interests, habits, and social backgrounds. While Max would appear to be quite a catch for any woman and someone who could "improve" Nora in a Professor Higgins-Eliza Doolittle type of relationship (a reference to Bernard Shaw's 1916 classic tale Pygmalion), Max comes to see Nora's influence over him as a powerful means of freeing him from himself.

The Pygmalion-like story appealed to many critics. In the Los Angeles Times, Tom Jenks called White Palace "a surprising, mid-American love song," noting it is "an unusually good, fast read" and that Savan was deft at writing "wrought-up explicit sex, which can't be quoted in a newspaper." According to Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post, the book contains "occasional infelicities of prose and a tendency toward didacticism" but nevertheless is "a serious entertainment, and a far cut above the run of contemporary 'yuppie fiction.'" Chicago Tribune writer John Blades observed that the "surefire" plot resembles that of Somerset Maugham's In Human Bondage and advised that "Savan is such a brashly assured writer and White Palace is such a model of energetic, fast-forward storytelling that this first novel is compulsive reading." A dissenting opinion was voiced in Mademoiselle by Joyce Maynard, who commented, "There's something almost insufferably insulting about the way Savan portrays [Nora].… In the end he never takes her seriously enough to show her experiencing any believable sensations besides orgasms."

When White Palace was made into a film in 1990, reviews indicated that it benefited from the performances of Spader and Sarandon, but that the story lost something in the adaptation. Los Angeles Times critic Sheila Benson described the film as "searingly well-acted" but found that the relationship between Max and Nora seemed more implausible on screen, having shed important details from the novel. In National Review John Simon remarked that "the film could have been interesting but for the simple-mindedness Hollywood exacts from its so-called 'adult' movies," referring to a neat romanticism he found imposed on the story.

Savan's second novel, Goldman's Anatomy, is the story of a threesome of misfits who are both attracted and aggravated by each other's physical and mental frailties. The central character, Arnie Goldman, is a reclusive, arthritic gem dealer who is surprised by the appearance of a high school friend who has dropped out of college. Arnie invites Redso and his girlfriend Billy to stay with him while Redso is writing a play. Arnie is strongly attracted to Billy, who has devoted herself to taking care of the manic-depressive Redso. Arnie eventually wants to leave the destructive triangle, but cannot bring himself to act.

The story is told, according to Savan, in a consciously film-like manner. He told Chicago Tribune writer Steve Rhodes, "I do write scenically, not in order to make my stuff easily translatable to the screen but maybe because movies have been almost as influential on my imagination as books have." Reviewers again admired the author's storytelling ability. A Publishers Weekly critic remarked that "Savan's brisk pacing allows for energetic dialogue if less than full-blooded characterizations." In a review for the Chicago Tribune, Bill Mahin reflected, "a book based on three such characters … has all the ingredients of lurid, sensational trash. But Goldman's Anatomy is, rather, a book about people coming to terms with physical and mental afflictions, often with a certain amount of insight." Donna Levin expressed her pleasure at finding another novel by Savan, and wrote in the Los Angeles Times that the book is "even more assured, and fulfills the promise of the first without covering the same territory." She called the book "a fascinating study of [Arnie's] paralysis; of madness and co-dependency, but mostly of love."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Chicago Tribune, June 28, 1987, John Blades, "First Novelists Deliver on the Paperback Route," p. 3; June 18, 1993, Bill Mahin, "A Confederacy of Cripples Struggling to Adjust," p. 3; July 19, 1993, Steve Rhodes, "Sick Thoughts White Palace Author Muses about Illness, Physical and Otherwise," p. 3.

Los Angeles Times, August 2, 1987, Tom Jenks, "Literature as Life Style," p. 1; October 19, 1990, Sheila Benson, "Prime Sarandon on White Palace Menu," p. 1; May 30, 1993, Donna Levin, "Victims of Love," p. 5.

Mademoiselle, November, 1987, Joyce Maynard, "Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture," pp. 116, 118-119.

National Review, December 31, 1990, John Simon, "Odd Couples."

Publishers Weekly, March 15, 1993, review of Goldman's Anatomy, p. 68.

Washington Post, June 24, 1987, Jonathan Yardley, "Love and Fate in Dogtown," p. D2.