Name that Book!

September 15, 2009 5:18 PM

What is this book?-Filter: I read a novel some 20 years ago, and cannot remember who wrote it or the title. Please read

It was about a filmmaker who had made the purportedly most beautiful movie in the world. It had an extremely difficult creation and had gone missing. The book is about the quest on the part of several people who are looking for it. They find it at the end, watch it, and are dazzled. Then in an unfortunate series of events, the film is destroyed.

What is this book? I read it during the '80s, but have no recollection about any more specifics.

posted by computech_apolloniajames to Media & Arts (5 answers total)

Something like this is one of the plots in the novel Infinite Jest, but that novel came out in 1996.
posted by LobsterMitten at 5:37 PM on September 15, 2009

Was the ghost of a young woman somehow involved? She'd been in the film and died (was she killed?) before she ever saw the movie. A young man (reporter?) locates the film for her and after viewing it a fire breaks out and destroys the only copy. This will now drive me crazy, thanks a lot!
posted by Allee Katze at 6:13 PM on September 15, 2009

Response by poster: No, Allee, it was definitely not that. LobsterMitten, I definitely did not read Infinite Jest. This was years before that.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 6:35 PM on September 15, 2009

Best answer: man, I had to think hard about this, but it sounds a lot like The Negative in some regards, at least.

Review here.

I liked it more than that, but I was about 18 when I read it.
posted by smoke at 6:37 PM on September 15, 2009

Response by poster: Smoke, I think you've got it! The time frame is about as late I can allow, since I remember reading this book in a particular home. Thanks!
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 6:53 PM on September 15, 2009