home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Time - Man of the Year
/
Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso
/
moy
/
062992
/
06299935.000
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1992-09-24
|
2KB
|
56 lines
REVIEWS, Page 81BOOKSBasilisk on The Red-Eye
By R.Z. SHEPPARD
TITLE: After Henry
AUTHOR: Joan Didion
PUBLISHER: Simon & Schuster; 319 pages; $22
THE BOTTOM LINE: Having cut the '70s dead, the author now
draws blood from the '80s.
Joan Didion's latest collection shuttles between coasts,
examining the past decade as played out in Los Angeles, New York
City and Washington. A basilisk on the red-eye, Didion turns a
deadly gaze on the centers of entertainment, journalism and
politics. Her evidence indicates a blurring of distinctions in
show business, news business and government. Careful
distinctions seem, in fact, to be out of fashion. Thought and
art increasingly imitate life in its simplest and least
attractive forms.
A eulogy for her former editor and friend, the late Henry
Robbins, is also a tribute to a vanishing species and a knock
on bottom-line publishers with little patience for editors who
nurture talented but not immediately profitable writers. A 1990
report on the revamping of the Los Angeles Times suggests what
can happen when market research turns leaders into followers,
and a doleful look at the rape and beating of Manhattan's
Central Park jogger blends past and present without confusing
the island's energy with its ugly tensions.
The political fictions of the nation's capital leave
Didion baffled, but not the sociology of Hollywood. She
separates status from class with the observation that L.A.'s
beauties and beasts may angle for the best tables at Spago, but
they can't get into Chasen's, the stronghold of old celluloid
royalty. Judging from Didion's account of the 1988 Writers Guild
strike, the standing of the men and women who provide the words
for the sound tracks has not changed much since a studio head
once called his scriptwriters "shmucks with Underwoods."
About half this collection deals with such Didion standbys
as California's earthquakes, airheads and the mayhem found on
what she likes to call the "freak-death pages" of the
newspapers. Readers should welcome the chance to savor the
vintage sotto voce style that more than 20 years ago
distinguished this careful writer from New Journalism's noisier
competition.