Here's something you might be interested in.
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More good writers in San Diego than you thought
Max Miller, Nathanael West, Richard Henry Dana, Jim Thompson, James Schuyler, Raymond Chandler
Story published in Imperial Valley News on Nathanael vWest accident.
God’s Country Remembered
My wife and I are driving up El Cajon Boulevard. It hasn’t changed much, not really. Businesses come and go (there wasn’t anything remotely like the Hung Vuong Pho restaurant back then), but the character of the old street is unchanged. Around 70th Street I see three teenage boys sitting on a curb, laughing and gesturing. “That’s me and my buddies,” I say. They give us the finger, and I laugh. “That’s us, 40 years ago.”
By Rick Demarinis, Nov. 3, 1994 | Read full article
Solar Aircraft Company during World War II. "An average of only one out of 25 applicants is given a job, and fully a fourth of those are discharged during or at the end of the 30-day probationary period."Metaphysical Okie
Lionel Van Deerlin worked with Thompson at the San Diego Journal. Van Deerlin remembers him as “a large man, with the characteristic stoop large men often have. A proper fellow, meticulous dresser. Never sloppy. He often wore tweeds. His voice was a degree or two below normal. He spoke in parsed sentences and wasn’t a trigger-ready humorist, but he had a droll wit and could see irony everywhere. He was a pleasant person to be around.”
By Ken Kuhlken March 30, 1995 | Read full article
Plagiarism in Primary Colors
“You’re right about Rebecca Sinkler having it in for you. There’s usually very little communication between the Times Book Review and the Times news department, so when Sinkler received Kiss’s letter, it was highly unusual for her to pass it along to them, instead of merely publishing it in the Book Review's letters section (or just ignoring it — my informant says the Times Book Review gets letters like that all the time, most of which are ignored).”
By Alexander Theroux, June 1, 1995 | Read full article
“Schuyler’s the most heartbreaking poet in the world. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to be deeply moved and deeply worried by his poetry.”
Boxes Full of Heartbreak
“He believed he was Christ. He would hold out his hands in crucifixion position and fall forward to the ground. He would say, five years after Frank O’Hara was dead, ‘Oh, I hear Frank O’Hara has been around.’ He would wash his money in the middle of the night. Or he’d say, ‘Money is shit.’ And Ron and Pat Padgett, who were there with him, would say, ‘You’re absolutely right.’”
By Judith Moore, Oct. 2, 1997 | Read full article
William Shawn and Bill Murray. "New Yorker editor William Shawn told me the piece had worked out and was going through.… I had finally made it, I told myself. I was a staff writer now on the best magazine in the country, if not the world.”
Janet, My Mother, and Me
“We went out to Belmont, and Harry couldn’t stop picking winners. We went to the 21 Club for dinner, and we scalped tickets for a Broadway musical in the fourth row center, Oklahoma! I rolled into my father’s apartment that night at about two o’clock. He was propped up in bed reading Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War; he said, ‘Well, how’d you do?’ And I said, ‘Well, Harry won 14 g’s, and I won about $400.’”
By Matthew Lickona, Feb. 10, 2000 | Read full article
Max Miller, 1930s. Almost immediately after publication, Miller had become a cult figure on college campuses.
Who was Max Miller?
The book, On the Waterfront, is, indeed, a work of genius. Only Max Miller could have written so penetratingly and concisely of the demise of the henpecked Johnny Lafferty. Or of the gangly, publicity-loving Charles Lindbergh, before he gained world celebrity. Or of the hermit on the rattlesnake-infested Mexican island who, on rare trips to the mainland, headed straight for Mrs. Morgan’s Boarding House for Girls, which really wasn’t a boarding house.
By Don Bauder, Feb. 19, 2004 | Read full article
The Man Who Lived in the Town with the Funny Name
The reader will meet characters who are presented by their author as La Jolla regulars. There’s Perky the fisherman and the brightly clothed Mrs. Billings and the dubious Willie-the-Arranger. These La Jolla regulars fish and swim and act up at cookouts and cocktail parties. Mrs. Billings well may remind you of the zany ladies seen in the New Yorker’s cartoons about the same time that the magazine described Max Miller’s La Jolla book as “charming writing.”
By Judith Moore, June 27, 2002 | Read full article
“Miller did most of his writing in his home overlooking the sea at 5930 Camino de la Costa, La Jolla. His body was found in his room there early yesterday by his wife.”Raymond Chandler’s Favorite Sourpuss
“What Scripps Institute needs is not so many test tubes as a whangdoodle of a football team … then when people elsewhere ask us where we live, they would know, from having read the sporting pages, how the name of our town is spelled and that there really is such a town.” He offers a similar proposal for the La Jolla Caves where, in 1947, “cormorants by the hundreds roost on the side of the cliff.”
By Jeff Smith, May 30, 2002 | Read full article
Someone once described the avant-garde as a place of “pleasureless hedonism.” And its main goal, to make everyone, the performer especially, uncomfortable.Writer, Interrupted
I was stunned, riding the bus along the coast to Encinitas, where my five-year-old sons were starting kindergarten. I took inventory. I no longer touched any musical instrument. I pretended that I could hear tones and harmonies, even quarter tone nuances. I would hear people talk on the bus and then write a piece in which they all sang/spoke their thoughts simultaneously. At the aviary in the San Diego Zoo I transcribed several bird songs.
By Tom Larson, May 30, 2002 | Read full article
West on fishing trip in California.
Almost Beautiful
He is a traffic statistic, a movie treatment, a novelist, a screenwriter, husband and hunter, the idea of an individual and a mass, the man and the man’s role. And he is a moment in May 1936, at Republic Pictures, sprawling on the leather couch in his producer’s office (it is lunchtime), lacing his fingers behind his head, a self-satisfied smirk because dreaming is the easy part, it just comes to him.
By Thomas Larson, June 27, 2002 | Read full article
Kuhlken, 2002. Kuhlken’s novels form a trilogy of mysteries set in and around San Diego and over the border in Mexico.
He Turns out Hometown Heroes
St. Martin’s paid Mr. Kuhlken $5000 each for The Loud Adios and The Venus Deal. The print run was 5000 copies. “The trilogy was not a good idea for marketing, because the three books were never available at the same time, and when they were, hardback was the only way you could get them, and nobody wants to spend 50 bucks on a trilogy from somebody they don’t know. But publishers know they’ll get library sales.”
By Judith Moore, Nov. 14, 2002 | Read full article
Here's something you might be interested in.
More good writers in San Diego than you thought
Max Miller, Nathanael West, Richard Henry Dana, Jim Thompson, James Schuyler, Raymond Chandler
More good writers in San Diego than you thought
Max Miller, Nathanael West, Richard Henry Dana, Jim Thompson, James Schuyler, Raymond Chandler
Story published in Imperial Valley News on Nathanael vWest accident.
God’s Country Remembered
My wife and I are driving up El Cajon Boulevard. It hasn’t changed much, not really. Businesses come and go (there wasn’t anything remotely like the Hung Vuong Pho restaurant back then), but the character of the old street is unchanged. Around 70th Street I see three teenage boys sitting on a curb, laughing and gesturing. “That’s me and my buddies,” I say. They give us the finger, and I laugh. “That’s us, 40 years ago.”
By Rick Demarinis, Nov. 3, 1994 | Read full article
Solar Aircraft Company during World War II. "An average of only one out of 25 applicants is given a job, and fully a fourth of those are discharged during or at the end of the 30-day probationary period."Metaphysical Okie
Lionel Van Deerlin worked with Thompson at the San Diego Journal. Van Deerlin remembers him as “a large man, with the characteristic stoop large men often have. A proper fellow, meticulous dresser. Never sloppy. He often wore tweeds. His voice was a degree or two below normal. He spoke in parsed sentences and wasn’t a trigger-ready humorist, but he had a droll wit and could see irony everywhere. He was a pleasant person to be around.”
By Ken Kuhlken March 30, 1995 | Read full article
Plagiarism in Primary Colors
“You’re right about Rebecca Sinkler having it in for you. There’s usually very little communication between the Times Book Review and the Times news department, so when Sinkler received Kiss’s letter, it was highly unusual for her to pass it along to them, instead of merely publishing it in the Book Review's letters section (or just ignoring it — my informant says the Times Book Review gets letters like that all the time, most of which are ignored).”
By Alexander Theroux, June 1, 1995 | Read full article
“Schuyler’s the most heartbreaking poet in the world. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to be deeply moved and deeply worried by his poetry.”
Boxes Full of Heartbreak
“He believed he was Christ. He would hold out his hands in crucifixion position and fall forward to the ground. He would say, five years after Frank O’Hara was dead, ‘Oh, I hear Frank O’Hara has been around.’ He would wash his money in the middle of the night. Or he’d say, ‘Money is shit.’ And Ron and Pat Padgett, who were there with him, would say, ‘You’re absolutely right.’”
By Judith Moore, Oct. 2, 1997 | Read full article
William Shawn and Bill Murray. "New Yorker editor William Shawn told me the piece had worked out and was going through.… I had finally made it, I told myself. I was a staff writer now on the best magazine in the country, if not the world.”
Janet, My Mother, and Me
“We went out to Belmont, and Harry couldn’t stop picking winners. We went to the 21 Club for dinner, and we scalped tickets for a Broadway musical in the fourth row center, Oklahoma! I rolled into my father’s apartment that night at about two o’clock. He was propped up in bed reading Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War; he said, ‘Well, how’d you do?’ And I said, ‘Well, Harry won 14 g’s, and I won about $400.’”
By Matthew Lickona, Feb. 10, 2000 | Read full article
Max Miller, 1930s. Almost immediately after publication, Miller had become a cult figure on college campuses.
Who was Max Miller?
The book, On the Waterfront, is, indeed, a work of genius. Only Max Miller could have written so penetratingly and concisely of the demise of the henpecked Johnny Lafferty. Or of the gangly, publicity-loving Charles Lindbergh, before he gained world celebrity. Or of the hermit on the rattlesnake-infested Mexican island who, on rare trips to the mainland, headed straight for Mrs. Morgan’s Boarding House for Girls, which really wasn’t a boarding house.
By Don Bauder, Feb. 19, 2004 | Read full article
The Man Who Lived in the Town with the Funny Name
The reader will meet characters who are presented by their author as La Jolla regulars. There’s Perky the fisherman and the brightly clothed Mrs. Billings and the dubious Willie-the-Arranger. These La Jolla regulars fish and swim and act up at cookouts and cocktail parties. Mrs. Billings well may remind you of the zany ladies seen in the New Yorker’s cartoons about the same time that the magazine described Max Miller’s La Jolla book as “charming writing.”
By Judith Moore, June 27, 2002 | Read full article
“Miller did most of his writing in his home overlooking the sea at 5930 Camino de la Costa, La Jolla. His body was found in his room there early yesterday by his wife.”Raymond Chandler’s Favorite Sourpuss
“What Scripps Institute needs is not so many test tubes as a whangdoodle of a football team … then when people elsewhere ask us where we live, they would know, from having read the sporting pages, how the name of our town is spelled and that there really is such a town.” He offers a similar proposal for the La Jolla Caves where, in 1947, “cormorants by the hundreds roost on the side of the cliff.”
By Jeff Smith, May 30, 2002 | Read full article
Someone once described the avant-garde as a place of “pleasureless hedonism.” And its main goal, to make everyone, the performer especially, uncomfortable.Writer, Interrupted
I was stunned, riding the bus along the coast to Encinitas, where my five-year-old sons were starting kindergarten. I took inventory. I no longer touched any musical instrument. I pretended that I could hear tones and harmonies, even quarter tone nuances. I would hear people talk on the bus and then write a piece in which they all sang/spoke their thoughts simultaneously. At the aviary in the San Diego Zoo I transcribed several bird songs.
By Tom Larson, May 30, 2002 | Read full article
West on fishing trip in California.
Almost Beautiful
He is a traffic statistic, a movie treatment, a novelist, a screenwriter, husband and hunter, the idea of an individual and a mass, the man and the man’s role. And he is a moment in May 1936, at Republic Pictures, sprawling on the leather couch in his producer’s office (it is lunchtime), lacing his fingers behind his head, a self-satisfied smirk because dreaming is the easy part, it just comes to him.
By Thomas Larson, June 27, 2002 | Read full article
Kuhlken, 2002. Kuhlken’s novels form a trilogy of mysteries set in and around San Diego and over the border in Mexico.
He Turns out Hometown Heroes
St. Martin’s paid Mr. Kuhlken $5000 each for The Loud Adios and The Venus Deal. The print run was 5000 copies. “The trilogy was not a good idea for marketing, because the three books were never available at the same time, and when they were, hardback was the only way you could get them, and nobody wants to spend 50 bucks on a trilogy from somebody they don’t know. But publishers know they’ll get library sales.”
By Judith Moore, Nov. 14, 2002 | Read full article
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