What are you reading?
Trollope’s Framley Parsonage. At 3:30 last night, I was reading a passage and I had a moment of being intensely grateful to Trollope. That sounds very pretentious.

Your new book also describes your long love affair with the movies.
I snuck off to the movies two or three times a week, for two or three years, from school, instead of going to gym, when I was in my early teens. My father never found out. This was the beginning of Hollywood’s golden age, and I saw some great stuff: King Kong, Scarface, the Marx Brothers, The Public Enemy. I memorized all the character actors. The movies taught me a great deal about storytelling and drama. I don’t know what exactly, but it was such a powerful medium. I’m a big believer in popular culture. I know people who say they don’t have a television. You better belong to the times that you’re in.

Let Me Finish
Harcourt, 320 pages

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• Archive: “Book Features”
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