Wondering on the internet What were the chances… Hello, Mercury! Sorry, got distracted there for a minute. Shall we get reacquainted? I used to post here all the damn time about things that struck my fancy, like Hollywood history, cool architecture, and fabulous books. Then I self-published a novel, and…
Category: Literature
The heatwave broke yesterday and I finished the first draft of the manuscript. I was expecting some kind of elation, but instead I took a nap. Recharging for the revisions to come? Perhaps. I’ve sent it off to he who gives notes for a first impression, to be followed by…
I have a thing about how Los Angeles is portrayed on film and in books. An author who makes me laugh, perhaps because of his dour satiric streak, is Evelyn Waugh. He visited Hollywood in 1947 to discuss a film adaptation of Brideshead Revisited, loathed the place, and ended up…
INTERVIEWER There’s a passage in one of your books in which you and Auden are on a train, and you’re savagely attacking religion, and he says: “Be careful, my dear, if you carry on like that, one day you’ll have such a conversion.” Do you think of it in those…
I just completed a very big task in terms of the book I wrote, and I thought I’d reward myself, by reading a childhood favorite of mine; a novel I read—enchanted, immersed—compulsively one week during a hot summer vacation many, many years ago. A book written over a period of…
Whereupon, at the tender age of thirteen, I set upon the path of playing nothing but hookers. Ida Lupino Is it any wonder she turned to directing? In an era, I might add, when that was a nearly impossible career choice for a woman. Have times changed? Not much. The…