The Whole Book Experience

Let me just say right off that this was not my favorite novel. It could be because the subject matter isn’t of much interest to me. I’m not much of a movie or television watcher, so Hollywood’s film history doesn’t do anything for me. Of slightly more interest is the description of Hollywood as a physical place in time and of California as a place where listless people apparently came to die. I’ve always been one to wonder how a landscape has changed over time, probably from a lot of time spent staring out the car window at passing terrain. And I saw a lot of it as a “Navy brat” whose family moved every two years up and down the Eastern Seaboard. The past 25 years I’ve settled in Southern California, so some of the neighborhoods in the book are familiar even though obviously much changed through the years. Continue reading →

Ever since I read Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Tao Te Ching at just the right time in a critical juncture of my life, I’ve eagerly sought out anything else he’s done. That made finding a copy of the Arion Press edition of The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke that much more joyful for me. Rilke, Stephen Mitchell, and the fine press treatment: What could be better? Continue reading →