Talk Given at The Saints & Sinners Conference, May 2014

Bruce Dern said in a recent interview, "Understand at the very beginning that it is an endurance contest. Nobody makes it overnight. And if they do, they’re gone in a decade."

I myself have not only seen very famous in their time writers come so quickly as to seem like meteors. In fact, I’ve seen entire literary movements come and go. When Midwesterner Saul Bellow moved to New York some people were so upset, one wrote in the Chicago Sun, "we critics made you and we can break you." He turned out to be wrong. Because by then Bellow had found a large and loyal readership. But once the critics turned on Thomas Wolfe, an immense presence in the 1930’s literary world, his literary end followed shortly. Fortunately so did his life. Even today we have not reassessed this particularly American writer’s underrated and unique achievement. The critics turned on F. Scott Fitzgerald and on Henry James and on Tennesee Williams in the end too. But they all continued writing, working toward a single end: the creation of a body of work. As a result we have The Rich Boy and The Loves of the Last Tycoon, Small Craft Warnings and Clothes For a SummerHotel, The Ambassadors and The Wings of the Dove. Aren’t you glad?

I was recently called to jury duty at a Federal Court in Los Angeles. Because it is a Federal Court for the Southern California District, I would have had to go to downtown Los Angeles to serve -- a distance of over ten miles. As I was without a car at the time, that would have required me getting up very early – I was expected to report at 7.45 am—and traveling in the dark by two busses and a subway. I’ve attended jury selection before in my area, and because there is a State Court in downtown Beverly Hills, a short distance from where I live, easily walked to from where I live, this had never been a problem before. However that would not be a solution this time.

As the weeks toward my proposed service neared, I found myself becoming more and more annoyed. I could, if needed, solve that car problem. I could even bear to take that public transportation and since I’m a senior, complain about the four hour travel time if I was selected and see what happened.

So no, that wasn’t the problem. That wasn’t what was getting me riled up. But something was, and every time I thought about it, I became angrier and angrier. This was very much unlike me: I’m an easy going guy; perhaps too much so for my own good. So what was going on?

Then I happened to read an op-ed piece in the LA. Times. It was about Global Warming, but it began with the writer speaking about her stint at jury duty and how simple that had been because, unlike the many complexities of Global Warming, she and the other jurors had been given a clear cut rule on what the law was they would have to apply to their case by a judge.

I was walking out of the West Hollywood Library a few blocks away from home, when I suddenly noticed a half dozen men hunched over and running between parked cars, Most of them wore hooded sweatshirts and all of them had cameras thrust out, with foot-long telephoto lens attachments. Naturally I wondered what was going on.

A minute later, I passed a woman sitting on a bench in the adjoining park watching her little blond-haired boy on a slide. It’s a children’s playground, always busy at midday. I thought, she looks familiar. Ordinarily I’d walk by—there are celebrities all over my neighborhood: in supermarkets, walking dogs, at pharmacy and take out windows. But something about her stopped me.

“Excuse me. I’m really embarrassed,” I said to her, “But I know you’re a celebrity and I just passed a bunch of paparazzi.”

I thought she would ignore me.

Instead, she leapt up. “My son!”

She ran to her child and all but covered him while she pulled out a phone and speed dialed. “Where were they?” she asked.

I pointed out the direction, off San Vicente Blvd.

“Take Robertson!” she said into the phone urgently. “Come now!” To me, she asked, “Help us?”