Literacy and Longing in L. A. (22 page)

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

The 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 O
z 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 Updike, 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.
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^*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.
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^*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.
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^*15
*
Antony and Cleopatra
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^*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.

^*18
* Rudyard Kipling, “The Power of the Dog.”
Return to text.

^*19
* Nicholas Murray,
Aldous Huxley, A Biography.
Return to text.

^*20
* Nicholas Murray,
Aldous Huxley, A Biography.
Return to text.