What is astonishing about the social history of the Vietnam war is not how many people avoided it, but how many could not and did not.
From John Gregory Dunne
All life is inherently dangerous. But beyond that, Los Angeles is just a wonderful place to be.
Anecdotes are factoids of questionable provenance, burnished to a high gloss, often set in gilded venues and populated with familiar names as background atmosphere, purged of ambiguity in the interest of keeping the narrative flowing smoothly.
Most anyplace one lives is essentially dangerous. There are floods in the Midwest, and tornadoes. There are hurricanes along the Gulf. In New York, you get mugged.
Class was always the domestic issue during the Vietnam War, not communism.
There was no pretense to objectivity; 'Time' had a partisan Republican point of view, and if it was one not shared by many of its gentrified Ivy Leaguers, few felt the compulsion to quit.
No professional athlete likes to admit that he has played too long. There is too much money involved, rarely enough saved, and there is the eternal hope that age has not withered skills.
A writer is an eternal outsider, his nose pressed against whatever window on the other side of which he sees his material.
Gavin Lambert was the first person in the movie business my wife and I met when we moved to Los Angeles in 1964.
I call myself a harp because I like the sound of the word - it is short, sharp, and abusive.
2 perspectives
1 perspectives