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City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s by Otto Friedrich. One of my all time favorite Hollywood books.

city+of+nets.jpg

Yes! I read this a few years ago...your post makes me want to pull it out again. Thanks for the reminder, Matthew.

Ghostie: Have you read Friedrich's book on Berlin in the 1920's? I hear that's supposed to be very good also.

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City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s by Otto Friedrich. One of my all time favorite Hollywood books.

city+of+nets.jpg

Yes! I read this a few years ago...your post makes me want to pull it out again. Thanks for the reminder, Matthew.

Ghostie: Have you read Friedrich's book on Berlin in the 1920's? I hear that's supposed to be very good also.

BEFORE THE DELUGE? I got it years ago on a girlfriend's recommendation but still haven't read it yet...matter of fact, I'm not sure I realized it was the same author.

Brad: that's another book I have but haven't read yet.

A Lark Ascending: glad you're digging the Duke book!

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On October 7, the Noble Prize in Literature will be announced. I'm getting a feeling in my bones that Thomas Pynchon will be named. I have no reason to think this, but it's just a hunch. Philip Roth would be nice also....

The betting line

Maybe that would get me to finally drag Gravity's Rainbow off the shelf over there. I think I've been dragging it around for thirty years now...

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Just wrapped up Nabokov's Laughter in the Dark.

I'm just not enjoying his books at all. Four novels in, and it's becoming a chore. I'm thinking about reading Lolita and calling it quits. At least I've found more of genuine interest in Mahfouz and Narayan.

Taking a short break to read a South African writer: Ivan Vladislavic's The Folly.

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Kinsella...wow. I haven't read his stuff in years. I'll have to break out The Iowa Baseball Confederacy and see if it's as good as I remember.

Haven't read his baseball fiction recently, but his Silas Ermineskin stories have held up for me.

All good.

I'm approx. 20% of the way through Franzen: Freedom. I like it so far.

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I've been reading some of Eugene O'Neill's later plays -- Iceman Cometh, Touch of the Poet, Moon for the Misbegotten. (I'm actually going to see a production of Long Day's Journey into Night next month, so I'm holding off on that.) I can't help but notice how many are set in bars or are about drunken wastrels. While he is still a terrific dramatist, his range, particularly in his last few plays, is pretty narrow, particularly when compared to Tennessee Williams who went in some really crazy directions in his last plays.

While I am not going to "read" this in any serious way, I was stoked to find a digital copy of I. N. Phelps Stokes' Iconography of Manhattan Island. Given this sells for upwards of $5000, I think I'll settle for the (free) PDF version: http://clio.cul.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=5800727

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I've been reading some of Eugene O'Neill's later plays -- Iceman Cometh, Touch of the Poet, Moon for the Misbegotten. (I'm actually going to see a production of Long Day's Journey into Night next month, so I'm holding off on that.) I can't help but notice how many are set in bars or are about drunken wastrels. While he is still a terrific dramatist, his range, particularly in his last few plays, is pretty narrow, particularly when compared to Tennessee Williams who went in some really crazy directions in his last plays.

Yes, I read a few O'Neills, but never found them memorable, unlike Williams. Perhaps some of the difference is because O'Neill belongs to an era pretty distant from our own - so much of his stuff was written in the 20s and the 30s, whereas Williams' key period is at least 20 years later. But, where American drama is concerned, Arthur Miller is my favorite, both for intensity and social message.

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I've been reading some of Eugene O'Neill's later plays...

Yes, I read a few O'Neills, but never found them memorable, unlike Williams. Perhaps some of the difference is because O'Neill belongs to an era pretty distant from our own - so much of his stuff was written in the 20s and the 30s, whereas Williams' key period is at least 20 years later. But, where American drama is concerned, Arthur Miller is my favorite, both for intensity and social message.

I've been very fortunate that a company here in Chicago has been doing some of Arthur Miller's real rarities, including Resurrection Blues & After the Fall. I should be able to watch A View from the Bridge later this season, and with that, I'll have seen nearly everything (at least the ones I wanted to see) with the exception of Incident at Vichy (which was done while I was out of Chicago).

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