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It seems pointless to try to critically assess ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, the novel re-imagination of Quentin Tarantino's screenplay and film, by conventional criteria. If you're reading it, you're not thinking about theme or concerning yourself with three-act structure or character arc. You're either into what Tarantino is into, or you'e not. You;'re either turning the pages of this boook with sheer delight, or you're not. Me, I'm into what Tarantino is into, as someone close to his age who shares his interest in a certain corner of a certain cultural time and place. And I turned each page with delight and also a running dread of running out of pages.

So, by that criteria, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD was a five-star experience for me. By other criteria, I think so too. Was it well-written? Well, the sentences are readable and full of fun stuff, and never lay flat on the page, even though there are long passages that read like Wikipedia entries. Again, if you love the subject, you'll devour the Wikipedia page on the subject, most likely.

So my reactions to ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD take the form of bullet points:

1. Why hasn't this been done more often? Why have unadapted screenplays developed into successful films not also been written as novels by their authors? Why has the work of the tie-in novel always been treated as a piece of downmarket hackwork on the level of the-in McDonalds drinking glasses to downmarket hack writers? Why wouldn't, say, Robert Towne write CHINATOWN, the novel? Or Joe and Ethan Coen write THE BIG LEBOWSKI, the novel? Why would that have been seen as an undesirable thing to do, or even beneath their artistic dignity? Tarantino really shouldn't be the first owner of a story for the screen to seize upon this idea.

2. As has been pointed out elsewhere, this is not a faithful reproduction of the screenplay. That would be boring, and I suspect Tarantino knew it. No, he simply developed the parts of ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD that he personally found most interesting, as is his perfect right to do, and downplayed the stuff he was less interested in. You won't find much about the big showdown between Cliff Booth and Rick Dalton and the murderous Manson disciples bent on "doing the Devil's business." But you will find even more interesting stuff, like Charles Manson's obsession with becoming a produced singer-songwriter rock star. Like Cliff Booth's history of homicide. Like just how much Rick Dalton had on the line when he did that guest spot as the villain on the pilot episode of LANCER in February 1969, and how his character's own challenges brought painful weight to bear on his own. You'll get to see more of Trudi Frazier, the little girl who plays the Lancer daughter, and not just during her shooting days with Rick, but what the decades ahead hold for her. (Hint: She is nominated three times for an Academy Award, her final time in 1999 as the female lead in "Quentin Tarantino's remake of John Sayles's script for the gangster epic The Lady In Red," opposite Michael Madsen as John Dillinger. She lost to Hilary Swank forBoys Don't Cry."

3. For those of you who have problems with how Quentin Tarantino depicts women, you won't find anything in this novel to change your mind. ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD is a story in which men are men and women are precious gems, bitches or whores, and no apologies are made for that mindset. Whether that's a reflection of the mindset of Tarantino or the mindset of its time and place is an argument I will leave to others. I certainly cringed at a lot of these passages, particularly the ones in which Cliff Booth doesn't feel particularly bad about inflicting a particularly nasty and lingering death on his wife.

4. Think about something: Of the novels you thunk are great, how amny do you think are great in part or sum because they're fun? Can a great novel be fun? Can a story that tickles you almost nonstop also be one that makes you think and engage with deeper with themes? Or are those two ideas necessarily exclusive? My experience with ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD was this: I was tickled to my toes,, and I'm thinking a lot about how art is made, how entertainment is manufactured, and how dreams and nurtured and neglected and often sacrificed on thei= altar of the devils that also inhabit the vessel that cultivate them. And yet, it was a bottomless bag of buttered and salted popcorn. I don't understand how those things can co-exist; I just know that they do, and I suspect it's because Quentin Tarantino is so filled with joy about what he gets to do and do well that you can't help getting caught up in the current of his sunlit obsessions. I guess I don't have a problem with that. Not in a world where greatness seems to ride dark-shadowed shotgun alongside grimness. That may give the story gravitas, but it doesn't give it delight.

5. ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD is proof of something I've long believed: Stars aren't interesting; fallen stars are. As are people on their periphery. The struggle is baked in; the three-act structure practically builds itself. To wit, to borrow an example from Rick and Cliff's time: I wouldn't much be interested in a biography of Paul Newman and Robert Redford, because they have a flat arc once they became stars, because they became stars. But I'd be utterly absorbed by a biography of, say, George Peppard or James Stacy, both of who have incredibly interesting true stories threaded into their downfalls from short-lived stardom. Stars play interesting people, but that doesn't make THEM interesting people. People who have to struggle to overcome themselves to keep one nostril afloat? Their stories are the ones I want. And I love that Quentin Tarantino knows this, and agrees.

6. ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD also passes my personal two-part test for a great novel:

a) Is it insanely quotable? Is it all you can do to keep from copying-and-pasting whole passages and sharing them with the world?

b) Would you love the story if it were twice as long? Would you be happily immersed in the world it inhabits for as long as your imagination � and the that of the creator � could possibly take it?

For me, the answer to both questions is "yes." And for those reasons above all, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD is a great novel in my eyes.