Americans in the media-pickled late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries spent a startling amount of time imagining themselves as the heroes of their own movies. They dressed for the audience, posed for camera, skewed the random events of their lives into Hollywood… Read full post »

The apartment was a mess.  It had been terminally messy for more than a week, but neither Rachel nor Stacey had been able to rouse themselves to the Herculean cleaning job the place had become.  It was degenerating fast.  Even the dishes in the kitchen were daunting.&nb… Read full post »

The Santa-Ana had picked up.  It moved through the streets beside Rachel with a deafening whisper, gliding along like a convoy of black limousines.  It was after midnight when she pulled up at the address on Fountain Avenue in West Hollywood.  As she got out of th… Read full post »

"I'd tell you to start writing your Academy Award acceptance speech," Todd Richter barked at Rachel over the phone, "but you're not gonna have time.  You got the terrorist script.  Otis Manges optioned Escapade -- six months for six grand.  But the really big news I wan… Read full post »

"There are two kinds of people in the world," said Todd Richter. "The ones who get what they want and the ones who don't."

Rachel… Read full post »

Rachel opened an account at the Bank of America in Marina Del Rey, and Stacey drove her to the Department of Motor Vehicles in Culver City.  She picked up a driver's manual and promised that she'd study it before taking the written test.  They went into Westwood… Read full post »

Rachel Scanlon sat on the plane, watching the San Bernardino Mountains give way to the flat geometry of Los Angeles. It looked alien from the air, a dense nest of sun-glared buildings with the blue punctuation of swimming pools.  Beyond it lay the ocean, immense and… Read full post »

They met on the third day of the Marriage Reconciliation Boot Camp, by the dumpsters where people smoked forbidden cigarettes, and it was love at first sight.

          “I hate this place,” he said.

  … Read full post »

I watch the lawnmower

Make another pass

Across the field of wildflowers

Cut to look like grass;

Hacked to their stems.

The sweet green turf

Keeps its secret,

Trimmed and discreet --

Like a circus… Read full post »

Rachel Scanlon stood on Broadway and Ninety-first Street, without a single key in her pocket.  She had severed all her ties with the city; there wasn't a door in all five boroughs that she could open.  Her life there was extinct--her job in her… Read full post »

It looks like my mother is going to have to move in to the nursing home. We just can’t do what needs to be done any more. Every day we are faced with our own ineptitude and clumsiness and… Read full post »

Mike made the call from his office the next day. The drive to work seemed to confirm his decision. It always felt good driving through that elaborate studio gate, chatting with the guard and then cruising into the urgent hurrying activity of the big lot. It was… Read full post »

Promiscuity was a disappointment; everyone agreed. Some people said it got lost in the early summer flood of movies. Some people said it was too sexy. Some people said it wasn’t sexy enough. Jim Hotaling, who directed the film, naturally thought the cuts hurt it; the studi… Read full post »

         Most of the preparations for The Princess' departure were already complete by the time… Read full post »

Is Mad Men the new Sopranos?

The shows have a lot in common: a changing world, a fraught nuclear family – ambitious, dissatisfied wife, cheating husband, stunted kids. A powerful charismatic patriarch… Read full post »

Mike was having an affair; Janet was certain of it. She had been suspicious as far back as the Sundance Film Festival. Through the winter and early spring, the suspicions had multiplied into certainty. She knew all the signs. She watched Oprah and Dr… Read full post »

           The guests had started arriving for Princess Katerina’s wedding at dusk the day before. Some had to travel more than two hundred miles, including the two dozen members of Torvald&rsquo… Read full post »

This happiness is small and fragile

Hope and irony crowded together… Read full post »

          Katerina dreamed of Wilf that night, and awoke sometime before dawn, certain that he was dead. But he wasn’t. Wilf was asleep himself, chasing rabbits in his own dream, chained to the basement wall of a house at the outskirts of… Read full post »

     The King decided: it was time to speed up the wedding plans. Torvald would never have full control of Katerina until they were married. That was obvious now.

          The next day he called her/… Read full post »

Over the next few days the power of the leaves faded gradually, and Katerina learned that she needed to swallow their juice roughly once every seventy-two hours. Within a fortnight, she had taken her last dose and the world started to darken and to bulk above her again. Each movement out… Read full post »

I spent half an hour this morning helping my mother put on her bathrobe.

The goal was to get her bundled up and across the ten feet from her bed to the kitchen table for breakfast. Like some hapless, out-numbered platoon trying to retake some anonymous numbered hill in Korea,… Read full post »

The Princess heard at breakfast the next morning that Anders had left for Vilny.

“Now perhaps there will be some regularity in this household,” said the King.

And indeed Katerina picked up the routines of her life again, studying… Read full post »

Princess Katerina’s life was as perfectly arranged as her father’s gardens. In the formal plantings cut by gravel walks, each season had an array of flowers that came into bloom in stately waves of color as the seasons chan… Read full post »

In this bizarre historical moment, when everyone on the right is quoting Ayn Rand and the sales of her books are sky-rocketing, something needs to be said to this resurgent mob of Atlas Shrugged enthusiasts: they’re missing the point.

When she died, in March of 198… Read full post »