MY LIFE WITH ALI MACGRAW
The passing of Ali MacGraw's ‘Love Story’ co-star Ryan O’Neal left us all with a nostalgic appreciation of the heartthrobs whose heartbreak ending sent the country out of theaters in tears to...
Category: Books
AN INTERVIEW WITH NOVELIST TONY CASTR0
Q. What made you decide to write this novel? Tony: I had forgotten about the very first column I ever wrote for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner in 1978. I think the reason I forgot about it is that...
ALEJANDRA CAMPOVERDI’S ‘FIRST GEN’: A TALE OF STRIFE AND SUCCESS
NOW OUT IN PAPERBACK! Alejandra Campoverdi explores many things familiar to first-generation kids: the invisible inheritances passed onto us from our family, being a “parentified child,”...
LARRY MCMURTRY: THE ‘MINOR REGIONAL NOVELIST’ WORTHY OF THE NOBEL PRIZE
‘Terms of Endearment’ followed ‘The Last Picture Show’ with great fanfare, but it was his Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘Lonesome Dove’ that cemented his legacy as one of America’s best...
The Daunting Curse of Historians Will and Ariel Durant
I read about the bookseller in Long Beach that had become trapped when the shelves in his store collapsed on top of him. I didn’t need to ask which books fell on him. I already imagined that he...
Letters From Los Angeles: Small Pleasures
On making crumbles in a time of war. I have been finding it increasingly difficult to do…well, just about anything these days. I know I’m not alone. The horror, the grief, the paralysis, the...
Sometimes It’s Not the Saint Who Wins— It’s the Sinner Who Sins Just a Little Less
By TONY CASTRO Let me tell you a little story about the miracle of scoundrels. No, I’m not talking about Lazarus rising from the dead, though Kevin de León’s political comeback might be the...
The Absurdity of Ringling & Barnum Political Theater in America
By MARY FRANCIS DAVIDSON How is it that an 18th century Frenchman had a better grasp on politics and democracy in America then any pundant or wannabe politico or expert since then? Someone asked me...
LETTERS FROM L.A.: BATHING WITH JOAN
Separated by 50 years but united by Hollywood, wildfires, and the endless hum of 'the deal,' two writers share a bath in Los Angeles. On Monday I took a bath with Joan Didion. She was gracious, took...
LET US NOW PRAISE DAVID MCHAM
The Last Newspaper Reader in America My college journalism professor demanded such dedication in pursuit of accuracy and definitive facts on each assignment that I still hold the profession in much...
The Santa Anas
By Joan Didion THERE IS SOMETHING UNEASY IN THE LOS ANGELES air this afternoon, some unnatural stillness, some tension. What it means is that tonight a Santa Ana will begin to blow, a hot wind from...
A Christmas Story
The Boy Who Loved Lint At a preschool in town, the teachers still talk about a boy named Trey who had special powers. It wasn’t magic, though that’s what his classmates had called it. The...
‘The Polar Express’ Christmas Classic Nears 40
When I was a young boy growing up in the suburbs of southeast Houston, every Christmas Eve I would sneak out onto our screened front porch and stare into the night sky as I tried to spot Santa’s...
Pete Aguilar & The Latino Presidency
By TONY CASTRO ON THE MORNING OF JANUARY 20, 2009, I am about 75 yards away from where Barack Obama would soon place his hand on the Bible used by Abraham Lincoln at his 1861 inauguration and...
The Thanksgiving of My Youth at the Rio Grande
So I had come to the Rio Grande, symbolic of the border of my existence and the two sides of who I was. And right now I wanted to be neither. I AWOKE TO FIND MYSELF WITH a young woman I’d met the...
Where Is the Herald Examiner When We So Desperately Need a Laugh
AS A DEPUTY EDITOR OF THE LATE AND SOMETIMES lamented Los Angeles Herald Examiner paper, back then under the editorship of Jim Bellows, I occasionally was asked to look at gossip items...