Thinking about Oz
Leslie Evans
Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond. Edited by John Joseph Adams & Douglas Cohen. Las Vegas, NV: 47North, 2013. 365 pp.
The Living House of Oz. Edward Einhorn. Illustrated by Eric Shanower. San Diego: Hungry Tiger Press, 2005. 238 pp.
John R. Neil's end papers for L. Frank Baum's 1907 Ozma of Oz
The land of Oz is a beloved American legend. It is known to most people from the 1939 musical film starring Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, and Jack Haley, still revived regularly on television and available on DVD. The film captured the look of the place much as it had been envisaged by its creator, L. Frank Baum, back in 1899: a vividly colored fairyland filled with odd but simple people and many magical creatures, from witches to live trees, winged monkeys, and Oz’s famous automatons, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman. These images are engrained on the American psyche. Read more
AN INFLUENTIAL LIFE REMEMBERED
Bill & Elsie Graham 50th wedding anniversary (Nov. 2010)
By Bob Vickrey
The day my sister first brought her boyfriend (and future husband) home to meet our family, Bill Graham seemed so tall and larger than life to this scrawny 15-year-old high school sophomore, I was afraid he might bump his head on our living room ceiling.
In fact, years later, when I remembered his first visit to our home, I was reminded of the opening lines of Jimmy Dean’s popular song of that era, Big John. “Every morning at the mine you could see him arrive. He stood six-foot-six, weighed 245.” However, unlike the mythical intimidating character in Dean’s ballad, the physical dimensions were about all those two shared in common. I soon learned this big man was a kind and gentle giant who would eventually become a central figure in my young life. Read more
THE LONG WINDING ROAD FROM LUBBOCK TO TINSEL TOWN
Lubbock In My Rear View Mirror
By Bob Vickrey
The two tall handsome gray-haired gentlemen stood staring each other down across the bookstore counter as if they were about to break out in a classic Burr and Hamilton duel.
Former Texas Governor John B. Connally and local Houston bookseller, Ted Brown, were trading sardonic barbs in their ongoing colossal battle of giant egos. They were both elegantly attired in expensive pin-striped suits and each represented that era of the male-dominated, testosterone-driven business world of the 1970s. Governor Connally was a regular customer at Brown’s Bookshop, the best-known bookstore in Houston at that time, and seemed to truly relish his encounters with the feisty Brown. Read more
The Literary Cookbook: The Day of the Locust
By Lynn Bronstein
In the 1930s, America was trying to pull its way out of a depression that had devastated the lives of millions. From the slums of eastern cities to the Dust Bowl, people looked to the West, to California, and especially to that place, originally a highly religious little village near Los Angeles, that had become synonymous with the American concept of glamour and magic: Hollywood.
Not all of the people who relocated to this special land found the gold at the end of the rainbow. Those who did not make money right away, and those who never would make money or be discovered for their talent and beauty, would live out their lives in tiny bungalows or seedy apartment houses, working as extras, waiting on tables, selling dubious products door to door or surviving through shadowy activities. These were the people whose lives interested 1930s writer Nathanael West and it was these souls, “the cheated,” who were the subject of his bittersweet 1939 short novel The Day of the Locust. Read more
A LIFE SPENT AWAKENING THE IMAGINATION OF CHILDREN
Young Bill Peet at his desk at Disney Studios
By Bob Vickrey
From my perch on the mezzanine level of festively decorated Santa Monica Place, I had a birds-eye view of the scene playing out below me as a forlorn-looking Santa Claus sat by himself watching scores of admiring children mob the famous children’s author at the opposite end of the mall.
With only two weeks left before Christmas, one would have assumed that Santa would have little problem commanding attention amidst the spirit of holiday revelry. However, poor Santa had met his match the day he competed with heralded children’s author, Bill Peet.
After having accompanied the former Disney artist and storybook mastermind in his many Southern California appearances, his winning the face-off with Kris Kringle was no great surprise to me. Mr. Peet’s unique storytelling skills and compelling artwork had connected powerfully with children for several generations—both on the big silver screen, as well as in his many picture books. Read more
Susan McRae’s Photos Of Lionel Rolfe’s Book Reading & Signing
A CULINARY SUPERSTAR IS BORN IN HOLLYWOOD
Wolfgang Puck in the 1970s
By Bob Vickrey
As I entered the dimly lit restaurant on Melrose Boulevard, my eyes had not fully adjusted from the mid-morning Southern California sunlight and I could barely make out the images of the shadows inside Ma Maison.
I spotted a large imposing figure in a darkened corner booth with curtains that almost surrounded his table. The man appeared to be the only diner in the restaurant. His massive size had required the width of two benches placed together to accommodate his enormous girth. As my eyes began to adjust to the darkness, I realized the man with the well-trimmed full-gray beard was none other than film legend, Orson Welles. Read more
Lionel Rolfe and Julia Stein to Give Reading at Skylight Books, March 30
Lionel Rolfe and poet Julia Stein will hold a reading from their works at Skylight Books, 1818 N. Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles, on Saturday, March 30, at 5 pm. Rolfe will read from his new book, The Misadventures of Ari Mendelsohn, while Stein will read from her What Were They Like? For more information see this link.
THE DUTTON’S CULTURAL GIFT TO THE CITY OF LOS ANGELES
 Doug Dutton Of Duttons Brentwood
By Bob Vickrey
As I was chatting with Doug Dutton in his backroom office at Dutton’s Brentwood Books, the back door suddenly opened and a well-dressed entourage stormed into the room and introduced their special guest, alienated writer, Salman Rushdie. Rushdie entered the room with several body guards in tow and proceeded to the front of the store where the staff had been assembled for this hastily planned drop-by visit to promote his latest book. Doug explained that a publicist from Random House had called to set up a private meeting with bookstore employees to talk about his new book. Rushdie had been forced to live covertly with 24 hour protection after Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini had issued a lethal fatwa after the publication of The Satanic Verses in 1988. All subsequent promotional book tours had promptly been cancelled. Read more |
THE DISTINGUISHED LITERARY ODYSSEY OF JOSH GREENFELD
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Honey on the road to San Francisco with some of the Spanish explorers
NOTES FROM ABOVE GROUND
By Honey van Blossom
(Honey is a Belgian Marxist former strip-tease artiste)
"Cities of the Golden Gate," Raymond Dabb Yelland, 1893. Most illustrations can be enlarged by clicking on them.
Prologue to the story of the Spanish exploration and settlement of California
Seasonal migrations of animals now extinct in California probably created the roads the native people used before the Spanish land exploration of California. “The heyday of giant mammals in North America was the middle and late Pleistocene, an epoch that started 2.6 million years ago and ended 11,700 years ago, around the time the Earth was thawing out from the Ice Age. The gigantic beasts, which migrated from Asia across a now-vanished land bridge called Beringia, are known as Rancholabrean megafauna, after the famous La Brea tar pits in downtown Los Angeles — the graveyard of thousands of saber-toothed tigers, giant bison and other extinct animals.”[1]
The seasonal migrations of the large mammals may have created the substantial roads used by the indigenous people after their arrival.[2]
Paul S. Martin and Richard G. Klein argue that Paleoindian over-hunting led to the extinction of the megafauna.[3] Others argue that climate change was responsible for mammoth and mastodon extinctions. As the last major glaciation ended around 12,000 years ago, climate warmed too quickly for the megafauna to adapt.
