One hot summer day in 1957, a 31-year-old airlines reservations agent from Monroeville, Ala., named Harper Lee walked into the offices of J.B. Lippincott with a manuscript for a novel she called Atticus. It had been rejected by 10 publishers already, but an editor who liked it decided to take a chance and invest two Read More
They gave the Oscar to the wrong Truman Capote. I do not begrudge the versatile, popular Philip Seymour Hoffman his Oscar for playing the tiny terror in Capote, but he was doing an impression. In Infamous, the second movie about the tortures that the literary sensation endured while writing his masterpiece, In Cold Blood, a Read More
They gave the Oscar to the wrong Truman Capote. I do not begrudge the versatile, popular Philip Seymour Hoffman his Oscar for playing the tiny terror in Capote, but he was doing an impression. In Infamous, the second movie about the tortures that the literary sensation endured while writing his masterpiece, In Cold Blood, a Read More
My great-grandfather was an itinerant book peddler in Odessa, who sold out of a backpack; my grandfather owned used book stores in Williamsburg and on South Street. These he held mainly to support gambling and drinking habits; his sons managed the businesses and he collected revenues. When my father returned from World War II, he Read More
