![]() ![]() “How did I betray such a reality?” he asks. There is less of us with each depleted memory.” He cuts to a scene in Walker Percy’s novel The Moviegoer, in which the protagonist sees William Holden on a street in New Orleans, and quotes Percy’s description of Holden: “An aura of heightened reality moves with him and all who fall within it feel it.” But DeLillo still can’t remember. If the memory of an experience is flawed, there is a rift in the continuity of self. “Every memory we have is, finally, of ourselves. This troubles him to the point of lament. He sees the street clearly, “the squat iron stanchions to keep out auto traffic the Spanish Steps in the near distance, banked with azaleas,” but the woman’s name escapes him. With the exception, perhaps, of Don DeLillo’s short piece, “That Day in Rome.”ĭeLillo struggles to remember the name of an actress he and his wife saw on the Via Condotti, 25 years earlier. This jab at Hollywood’s lazy mythmaking aside, most of the articles inside are benign. Behind the backdrop, beyond the studio, lies the real Hollywood sign, shrouded in a mawkish haze. On a backdrop, we see a painted image of the Hollywood sign, over which billowy clouds fill an azure sky. Its cover depicts a film crew shooting an actress behind the wheel of a stationary convertible, her hair tousled by a large fan standing just off-camera. ![]() ![]() ![]() THE OCTOISSUE of The New Yorker features essays and articles about Hollywood. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |