William Monahan, Oscar Winner, Is Out of Print

Hey, newly minted fans of Oscar-winning Departed screenwriter William Monahan, want to check out more of his work? Well, here’s the good news: Turns out he has an entire offscreen oeuvre. Monahan’s Wikipedia entry asserts that he “originally wanted to be a man of letters but found they no longer existed in America,” which, being on Wikipedia, may or may not be true. But we know that he’s an alum of both Spy and of the New York Press. And that he’s a published novelist, the author of 2002’s Light House. Plus, in 1997, he won a prestigious Pushcart Prize for a short story published in an obscure literary journal. So where can you find all this? Well, that’s the problem.

Spy, of course, is long dead. (And Monahan’s tenure unfortunately didn’t intersect with The Funny Years.) The New York Press Website seems to offer a lone book review (of A Gallows Sermon: Life & Death Among the Decadents, in case you were wondering) by its once-prolific vet. And, while you could probably dig up the Pushcart Prize anthology, we should warn you that the language in Monahan’s story is more seventeenth century than street Boston. Worst, as of this morning, Amazon.com offered a mere eighteen copies of Light House — new and used, starting from $2.77 — because it’s out of print. We’d almost feel bad for the guy. Except, you know, that we don’t.

Light House [Amazon.com]
William Monahan [Wikipedia]