Looking for Mr. Goodbar
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First edition
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| Author | Judith Rossner |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
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Publication date
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1975 |
| Media type | Print (Cloth; Paper) |
| Pages | 284 (Cloth) |
| Preceded by | Any Minute I Can Split |
| Followed by | Attachments |
Looking for Mr. Goodbar is a novel by American writer Judith Rossner. Published in 1975, the book—a "stunning psychological study of a woman's passive complicity in her own death" —won critical acclaim and was a #1 New York Times best seller.
Theresa Dunn, a young woman living in New York City, leads something of a "double life": by day she is a devoted schoolteacher, but by night she cruises singles bars. Eventually, just as she's trying to make a new start, Terry is murdered by a young drifter she has just met and invited home.
By 1973, having published three novels, Judith Rossner was a writer of "impeccable literary credentials." Invited by Nora Ephron to contribute to a special women's issue of Esquire magazine, Rossner wrote an article about a real-life murder which had sparked her interest, that of schoolteacher Roseann Quinn who had been brutally slain in January 1973 by a man she had purportedly picked up in a singles bar. In the end, Esquire, fearing legal ramifications, declined to publish the article, so Rossner decided to write a novel instead.
Looking for Mr. Goodbar was published by Simon & Schuster on June 2, 1975, to rapturous reviews. Carol Eisen Rinzler, in The New York Times, said the book was "a complex and chilling portrait of a woman's descent into hell... full of insight and intelligence and illumination." Time magazine wrote, "it is a rare kind of book: both a compelling 'page turner' and a superior roman à clef." Newsweek found the book to be a “hard, fast, frightening read.”
Looking for Mr. Goodbar was also a commercial blockbuster: on June 22, 1975, it entered the New York Times best seller list, and would remain there for 36 weeks, three of those weeks at #1. It sold over four million copies, becoming the fourth highest-selling novel of the year.
Paramount Pictures purchased film rights to the novel for $250,000. The film, written and directed by Richard Brooks, was released in 1977, and starred Diane Keaton, Tuesday Weld, William Atherton, Richard Gere, and Tom Berenger. The film received mixed reviews, but was a success at the box office, earning $22.5 million (the equivalent of $86.9 million in 2016). It received two Academy Award nominations: best supporting actress (Tuesday Weld) and best cinematography (by William A. Fraker). Rossner herself "detested" the film, but did praise the performance of Diane Keaton.
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Wikipedia