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Crooning

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Dunne takes the reader through the competitive nature of writing in America. Reviewing this elegant collection of essays I use the present tense, notwithstanding the fact that John Gregory Dunne, husband of Joan Didon, is deceased. He repeats, amusingly, the accusation of one of his critics that his brother sells more books and his wife writes better ones! Robert Silvers makes it invigorating to write for THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS. He was press secretary to Chet Bowles and so he and the author trade Connecticut lore when getting together. The title of the collection is based upon the notion that Dunne always wanted to be a crooner, a Johnny Mathis.

In the first essay the story of Daniel James, Danny Santiago, the author of FAMOUS ALL OVER TOWN, is recounted. James was the only classical Greek major in his 1933 class at Yale. He wanted to do something difficult. He was blacklisted. He and his wife inherited a Charles Greene house built at Point Lobos near Carmel, California in 1968. The Dunnes rented the Jameses' house in Hollywood. Instead of fleeing abroad, Dan James and his wife, Lilith, had spent time in East Los Angeles in Chicano neighborhoods. James lost confidence under his name but could write as Danny Santiago. When Robert Silvers asks Dunne to review FAMOUS ALL OVER TOWN, the true identity of Santiago is disclosed with James's permission.

In another essay the Owens Valley water war, CHINATOWN, is discussed. Land speculators siphoned off and diverted river water. Manifest Destiny, in unromantic fashion, moved from waterhole to waterhole. In the 1920's William Mulholland, water department head, refused to bargain with the ranchers of Owen Valley. The author is drawn to watch the proceedings at the Santa Monica Courthouse. In the elaborate dance there, the same judges, lawyers, and prosecutors appear. It is a hermetic world, the ultimate game show.

Another offering is entitled, 'On the Kennedys.' Dunne feels he is bothered by the Chappaquiddick incident because of its aftermath. Edward Kennedy waited ten hours to make his report to the police. Everyone around Kennedy worried about how to handle it--strategy. There was calculation. Dunne calls Arthur Schlesinger the Lysenko of Camelot. John Kennedy's concept of leadership was that of a commando in contrast to Eisenhower's mastery of bureaucratic management. It was charisma in action. Unfortunately what existed was an appetite for crisis. William Buckley presents a life without shadows in his 1981 installment of his autobiography, OVERDRIVE. Self-examination is avoided, Dunne contends. The author calls Renata Adler a literary hit woman . To Adler language matters and words have meaning. Dunne functions as a journalism guide. He calls 'reportedly' a weasel word. Watergate moved some journalists to become celebrities bearing facts. The clues to a culture are its style and Tom Wolfe reports this. Dunne says Wolfe resembles a male Edith Sitwell. Wolfe is an outsider and unique.

In screenwriting it is necessary to know that the grammar is different from the grammar for fiction. The camera diminishes the importance of dialogue. The script provides structure. A screenwriter's teeth are set on edge by the auteur theory. Screenwriters are fated to be chronic malcontents. Reading a book to consider it for a screenplay is reading it carnivorously. Writing is manual labor of the mind. Dunne favors a kind of notebook available in France also used by Bruce Chatwin.