One of the strangest things that happened in the days following my book rampage was that, somehow, I lost the desire to read. I dumped the debris of broken spines and disfigured pages into a box and delivered it to my neighborhood library. The librarian arched her eyebrows as I handed her my poor little darlings, but she didn’t mention their wounded appearance. As I drove away, I felt a wave of remorse, the way a parent must feel when dropping off their child at boarding school. A mixture of freedom, guilt, and loss, tempered by the realization that I was doing the right thing. I must admit, my abstinence only lasted a few months and then I was back at Borders checking out the latest Booker Prize winners and National Book Finalists.
But it was different. Not like before, when my stupid, marathon zonk-out sessions plunged me into a deep and enthralling haze of complex, voluptuous portraits and mysteries, myths, dreams, deaths, human tragedies, ingenious plots, failed marriages, odysseys, ecstasies, meditations, hallucinations, and extended, strenuous, pulsating scenes of making love. But I do go on. That’s what I’m prone to doing. Going on and on, devouring novels at an alarming rate and losing my way. I regret that now. I truly do. But big-deal realizations often elude you. In any case, memories of the past year are all jumbled together now with nostalgic whiffs of vinegar and bath soap and Palmer’s tender calls and wounded bucks and tequila and a child’s wispy little voice. I can tap into any of these sensations and come out with the blunt, hard edge of what actually happened to me and all the people I love.
As for my books, the pathetic, picked-over state of my diminishing library is only half the story. Speaking of which, I probably had you fooled about the giveaway book thing. I actually went back a few days later and told the same librarian I had changed my mind and could I just give a contribution instead. She pointed to the untouched box behind the counter and smiled an indulgent little smile. What was she going to do with a load of mangled, smashed-up-against-the-wall books? I took them to Virginia, who said she’d work on them when she could. Then she went into her whole “I’m exhausted, I have no free time, I’m so busy” routine and I felt better about everything.
I’ve driven by McKenzie’s countless times in the past year since Fred and I stopped seeing each other but I still can’t bring myself to go in. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t approve of my relationship with Bea and Harper. They rarely talk about him, and I doubt if they even see him that often.
On Harper’s last birthday, Bea and I gave her a tea party at Sally’s, a Victorian teahouse in Santa Monica, and we invited all of her friends, along with their mothers. I sent Fred an invitation, never expecting him to come, but he surprised us all and showed up in time for the cake. As he flashed that grin of his at the gathering of attractive young mothers, Darlene leaned over to me, looked at Fred wistfully, and whispered, “Too bad he was a dud.” Harper was happy to see him, though, and greeted him as one would a distant relative who sometimes drops in. She gave him a kiss and then ran off to play with her friends. He smiled. I smiled. It was awkward.
My advice to you concerning this matter is don’t be snowed by a handsome guy at a bookstore who quotes Cicero and Proust. They are often not the real thing. As with so many fleeting pleasures—travel in their company, enjoy them every so often, and then get on with your life.
The other day, my mother called to tell me she’s coming to L.A. to visit, maybe with Thomas. She suggested a literary trip to San Francisco to visit the old haunts of Twain, Saroyan, and Steinbeck. I told her that I’d try, but I’m just not sure right now, what with my schedule at the Times and Palmer’s obligations at the studio.
Ginny tells me I’m almost normal now. (Ha!) Well, compared to before, I guess I am. But every now and then, when I can’t sleep, or when I’m at odds with the world, I have those urges. Sometimes I indulge. Sometimes I don’t. In any event, books still quell the longing one gets in this world and can tell a simple story that helps make sense of things.
Some nights, you’ll find me outside on our loggia, wrapped in my oversize terry-cloth robe, nestled in the big wicker rocker, with a steaming mug of hot chocolate—well, okay, laced with a little Kahlua—probably reading Alice Munro’s latest collection of short stories, or rereading Vonnegut, keeping another stack of books on reserve, like a child hoarding Halloween candy. I can usually hear the distant hum of the freeway as I look out on the view—the lights of Century City and past that, on summer nights, the surreal silhouette of Dodger Stadium, floating on the horizon like a low-flying saucer.
Authors’ Note
The authors would like to recognize a few other sources we consulted in writing this novel. In the chapter entitled “No Reliable Sense of Propriety” we used as a source Mark Twain, An Illustrated Biography by Geoffrey C. Ward and Dayton Duncan, including Ken Burns’s preface to that book. In the chapter entitled “Halfway to Fairyland,” we used as source material “The Man Behind the Curtain: L. Frank Baum and the Wizard of Oz” by Linda McGovern. We also would like to note that the chapter title “Where the Wild Things Are” is also the title of a Maurice Sendak book, and the chapter title “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” is also a chapter heading in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows.
Book List
Authors, artists, and works that are discussed or mentioned in this novel, listed in order of first appearance.
Ted Kooser, poet
Jorge Luis Borges, author
John O’Hara, author
Andrew Wyeth, painter/author
N. C. Wyeth, painter/author
Robert Frost, poet
Arthur Christopher Benson, author
Nicholas A. Basbanes, reporter/author, and Among the Gently Mad
Fourth Earl of Chesterfield (Philip Dormer Stanhope), author
The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
John Coltrane, musician/composer
Paul Desmond, musician/composer
Shirley Hazzard, author, and The Transit of Venus and The Great Fire
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Dorothy Parker, author/wit
Jane Austen, author
The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty
Gustave Flaubert, author, and Sentimental Education and Madame Bovary
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
Evelyn Waugh, author
Michael Frayn, author/playwright
Mark Twain, author, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Henry James, author, and The Portrait of a Lady
Pablo Neruda, poet
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Thomas Carlyle, author/historian, and The French Revolution: A History
John Stuart Mill, author/philosopher/economist
Iain Pears, author, and An Instance of the Fingerpost
Charles Dickens, author
Cicero, Roman statesman/author
Francis Bacon, author/philosopher
Christopher Wren, architect/author
John Locke, author/philosopher
Voltaire, playwright/poet
Upstairs, Downstairs, British television series
Jonathan Franzen, author, and The Corrections
Alice Munro, author, and Lives of Girls and Women
Kate Braverman, author, and Lithium for Medea
Oscar Wilde, author/playwright, and The Importance of Being Earnest
William Shakespeare, playwright, and The Tempest
Emily Post, author
William Lyon Phelps, true crime writer
Buzz Aldrin, author/astronaut
T. S. Eliot, poet/playwright, and The Waste Land, “The Burial of the Dead”
Charles Lamb, essayist
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Alice Roosevelt Longworth, author/political activist
Theodore Roosevelt, American president/author
T
he Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Eugene Ormandy, conductor/composer
Eudora Welty, author
Geoffrey Chaucer, author/poet
Virgil, Latin poet/author
William Butler Yeats, poet
Matthew Arnold, poet
Virginia Woolf, author
Leo Tolstoy, author, and War and Peace
“The Little Hours,” short story by Dorothy Parker
Alain De Botton, author, and How Proust Can Change Your Life
Chicken Soup for the Soul by Jack Canfield
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Pam Keesey, editor
Jewelle Gomez, author
Nora Roberts, author
Graham Greene, author, and The End of the Affair
Georges Perec, author, and La Disparition (alternate title for the novel A Void); also Life: A User’s Manual
Miguel de Cervantes, author, and Don Quixote
Henry Miller, author, and Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, and The Rosy Crucifixion
Margaret Oliphant, author
David Halberstam, journalist/author
A. Scott Berg, author
Frank McCourt, author
The South Beach Diet by Arthur Agatson
Sir Walter Scott, author/poet, and Ivanhoe
Christopher Marlowe, author/playwright, and Dr. Faustus
Bertrand Russell, philosopher/author, and The Conquest of Happiness
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Ann Bannon, author
Willa Cather, author, and My Antonia
Anne Tyler, author
William Styron, author
William Faulkner, author
F. Scott Fitzgerald, author
Mary McCarthy, author
Logan Pearsall Smith, essayist
Julian Barnes, author, and Flaubert’s Parrot
Edith Wharton, author
Christopher Morley, author, and Kitty Foyle
Duke Ellington, composer/author
Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson), author
Alexander Pope, poet
Ellen Bass, poet, and “Pray for Peace”
C. K. Williams, poet, and The Singing and “Scale: 11”
Frank Sinatra, singer/author
Lord Byron, poet
Billy Collins, poet, and Sailing Alone Around the Room and “Questions About Angels”
James J. Walker, former New York City mayor/author
Thomas Pynchon, author
Kenneth Grahame, author, and The Wind in the Willows
The Odyssey by Homer
T. E. Lawrence, author
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, poet
Tom Stoppard, playwright
Dante, poet
Allen Ginsberg, poet
Maurice Sendak, artist/author
George Orwell, author
Randy Newman, songwriter
Omar Khayyam, poet
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
“But the One on the Right,” The New Yorker article by Dorothy Parker
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
Thelma & Louise, film
Body Heat, film
Children of a Lesser God, film derived from play of same title by Mark Medoff
Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel, authors, and One Nation Under Therapy
David Baldacci, author
Danielle Steel, author
Tom Clancy, author
Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author, and The Yearling
Where the Wild Things Are, illustrated children’s book by Maurice Sendak
Harold Ross, journalist/editor/New Yorker co-founder
Philip Larkin, poet, and A Study of Reading Habits (poetry collection)
The Ponder Heart and Why I Live at the P.O. by Eudora Welty
H. L. Mencken, journalist/author
Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain
Bluebeard, children’s tale
Cinderella, children’s tale
My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett
The Princess and the Goblin by George Macdonald and Arthur Hughes
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author, and The Little Prince
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson)
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Black Stallion by Walter Farley
The Wizard of Oz and subsequent book series by L. Frank Baum
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
A. A. Milne, children’s author
Edward Lear, children’s author, and The Owl and the Pussycat
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
Ernest Hemingway, author
Louisa May Alcott, author
Leona Rostenberg, author
Howells Letters by Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) and William Dean Howells
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Horace, poet
Roald Dahl, author, and “The Magic Finger”
David Mitchell, author, and Cloud Atlas
E. B. White, author, and Charlotte’s Web
“Lady Lazarus,” by Sylvia Plath
Edgar Allan Poe, author/poet
Thornton Wilder, author
Endless Summer, film
William Carlos Williams, poet, and “Love Song”
One Writer’s Beginnings by Eudora Welty
Don DeLillo, author, and The Body Artist
Johnny Hartman, musician/composer
The Bible
Theodor Geisel/Dr. Seuss, children’s author, and The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street
Audrey Geisel, author
L. Frank Baum, author
Emily Dickinson, poet
Charles Kingsley, author, and The Water Babies
The Borrowers by Mary Norton
Gertrude Stein, author
Edward Albee, playwright/author
August Strindberg, playwright/author
Jean-Paul Sartre, playwright/author
Mother Teresa, nun/author
Ross Macdonald, novelist, and The Chill and The Lady in the Lake
Dashiell Hammett, author, and The Maltese Falcon
Raymond Chandler, author
The Paid Companion by Amanda Quick
Lady Be Good by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Forbidden by Elizabeth Lowell
Paradise by Judith McNaught
The Reluctant Suitor by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss
The Heiress by Jude Deveraux
Groucho Marx, author/comedian
Jim Harrison, author
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Irving Berlin, songwriter/composer
“The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” a chapter title from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare
Chuck Yeager, author/astronaut
Edvard Munch, artist, and The Scream
P. J. O’Rourke, journalist
Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde
Marcel Proust, author, and Remembrance of Things Past
When We Were Very Young, poetry collection by A. A. Milne, and “Spring Morning”
The Sound of Music, film
Winne Ille Pu, Latin translation of Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
Now We Are Six, poetry collection by A. A. Milne
Blaise Pascal, author
Rudyard Kipling, author/poet, and “The Power of the Dog”
Garrison Keillor, author
James Thurber, humorist/writer
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, poet
John Cheever, author
John U
pdike, author
“To Flush, My Dog” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Daphne Du Maurier, author, and Rebecca
Aldous Huxley, author
D. H. Lawrence, author
Nicholas Murray, author, and Aldous Huxley, A Biography
Jim Morrison, author/musician
John Fowles, author, and The French Lieutenant’s Woman
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
Robert Louis Stevenson, author
Andy Warhol, author/artist
Dennis Hopper, author/actor/photographer
William Saroyan, author
John Steinbeck, author
Kurt Vonnegut, author
About the Authors
Karen Mack, a former attorney, is a Golden Globe Award–winning film and television producer. Jennifer Kaufman was a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times and a two-time winner of the national Penney-Missouri Journalism Award. Both live in Los Angeles and this is their first novel.
FOOTNOTES
To return to the corresponding text, click on the reference number or "Return to text."
*1* Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest. Return to text.
*2* “The Little Hours,” The Portable Dorothy Parker, Penguin Books. Return to text.
*3* “The Little Hours,” The Portable Dorothy Parker, Penguin Books. Return to text.
*4* “The Little Hours,” The Portable Dorothy Parker, Penguin Books. Return to text.
*5* Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot. Return to text.
*6*C. K. Williams, The Singing, “Scale:11.” Return to text.
*7*Billy Collins, Sailing Alone Around the Room, “Questions About Angels.” Return to text.
*8†Donna Seaman, Booklist Return to text.
*9* Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel, M.D., One Nation Under Therapy. Return to text.
*10*Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.” Return to text.
*11*Mark Twain-Howells Letters, “My Mark Twain,” by William Howells. Return to text.
*12* Luke 229–232, Peter 123–124. Return to text.
*13*The New York Times, November 29, 2000. “Mrs. Seuss Hears a Who, and Tells About It,” by Joyce Wadler. Return to text.
*14†Ibid. Return to text.
*15*Antony and Cleopatra Return to text.
*16* Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel, M.D., One Nation Under Therapy. Return to text.
*17* A. A. Milne, Now We Are Six, “The End.” Return to text.
Literacy and Longing in L. A. Page 24