'Beautiful Ruins,' by Jess Walter Beautiful RuinsBy Jess Walter(Harper; 337 pages; $25.99)"Here for business or pleasure?" a car-rental clerk asks a would-be screenwriter just deplaned in Hollywood in the opening pages of Jess Walter's poignant, comical and marvelous novel "Beautiful Ruins." Interspersed here and there are pages from an unfinished World War II novel, a chapter of a rejected movie-town memoir and several scenes from a Midwestern community-theater play. Dee Moray, a tall and blond 22-year-old actress with a bit part in the disaster film "Cleopatra" shooting nearby; Pasquale Tursi, owner of the most humble inn ("The Hotel Adequate View") where Moray lodges after being told she has cancer; Alvis Bender, American vacationer and possible novelist; studio publicist and future producer Michael Deane ("the Deane of Hollywood"), and - in a garrulous, whirlwind cameo appearance - the famous Richard Burton. Fate can always turn fickle, and life is full of surprises, in this ensemble piece of a novel balanced by sudden jump cuts and lingering dissolves. Not to forget Shane Wheeler, that wannabe scriptwriter with a custom-made epiphany to justify giving up literature for the movies, flickering pictures stitched in our minds that replaced our own memories, archetypal stories that became our shared history, that taught us what to expect from life, that defined our values.