Southern Bookman

Extreme heat sounds alarm on climate change

Another nuclear summer has arrived.

A high of 99 degrees is predicted for Atlanta Wednesday, once a rare occurrence even in July or August.

As Saporta Report columnist Tom Baxter pointed out this week, this is a more intense heat than in the past.

Each morning, I'm amazed at so many temperatures above 100 in The New York Times' listing of weather forecasts for cities across the nation.

Phoenix and Las Vegas don't yet reach the highs of Mideast cities like Baghdad or Tehran, where readings often break the once unimagined threshold of 120 degrees. Our American desert and Southern cities will get there in a few years if current patterns continue.

Soaring heat killed recently killed hundreds of Muslims making their Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. Elite pilgrims had access to air conditioned tents and water stations. Those not so privileged died in the heat.

Daily weather conditions increasingly indicate long-term patterns of climate change, as Baxter pointed out.

The South's punishing summers will drive many to Northern states, whose climates will turn moderate.

Southern governors like Florida's Ron DeSantis deny that climate change exists, as extreme weather imperils the region's future.

If action is not taken soon, rising sea levels and soaring sea levels will make much of the South and the Southwest uninhabitable.

As life-threatening weather becomes an every-day reality, the GOP wants to increase petroleum production, spewing more CO2 and methane emissions into the already overloaded atmosphere.

A Trump victory in the presidential election will place the nation on a path of no return. Biden's re-election will offer the possibility of shifting from a petroleum-based economy to alternative sources of power.

The election will decide the future of humanity.

 

 

Washington Post publisher Will Lewis' travails threaten newspaper's future

Washington Post publisher Will Lewis' tenure increasingly looks tenuous, endangering the newspaper's long-term survival.

The New York Times Tuesday fired the latest salvo at the former Rupert Murdoch consigliere, alleging Lewis destroyed evidence during a Scotland Yard investigation of phone hacking allegations against Murdoch's News of the World.

Lewis, supposedly cooperating with police and leading clean-up of the scandal at the now defunct tabloid, instead oversaw the destruction of millions of newspaper emails, the Times reported.

Murdoch's newspaper was accused of hacking the phones of prominent news subjects, most egregiously a 13-year-old murder victim. Prince Harry and others have filed lawsuits seeking damages in the hacking scandal.

The embattled Post publisher, a former executive at Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, incited a staff revolt after announcing a newsroom reorganization that led to the departure of former Post editor Sally Buzbee.

Post owner Jeff Bezos installed Lewis to stave off losses reported to have reached $77 million last year. Before Lewis' arrival, the Post suffered severe staff cuts. 

Under the shakeup, Lewis presented a new leadership team of fellow WSJ alum Matt Murray and London Telegraph editor Robert Winnett. Murray immediately replaced Buzbee and runs the newspaper's daily operation, which has published several articles critical of Lewis. 

After the presidential election, Murray is to direct a new Post department devoted to social media news, video and lifestyle features. Winnett was supposed to have come in to take charge of the Post's "core" newsroom, but he decided not to leave the Telegraph after the Post staff's unrest grew.

A rising drumbeat of stories drew attention to Lewis' efforts to cover up the phone hacking allegations. Recent articles disclosed conflicts of interest in public relations and news ventures Lewis launched after leaving the Journal. His consulting firm WJL Partners, bearing his initials, advised former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

The revelations consistently point out the looser standards of British journalism, including paying news informants, a practice in which Lewis reportedly engaged.

Sad that such a disreputable journalist now leads the newspaper of Ben Bradlee and Katharine Graham, famous for breaking the Watergate scandal that led to the downfall of former President Richard Nixon. 

To save the Post from further damage, Bezos needs to replace Lewis.

Perhaps former editor Marty Baron, who faced his own staff dissension, can be brought out of retirement to take the publisher's role, although he's revered as a newsroom leader.

London Guardian media writer Margaret Sullivan, a former newspaper executive and New York Times ombudsman, could also bring restorative leadership.

Bezos appears to value the Post, but he might decide to give up the sinking newspaper. Even a multiple billionaire like Bezos doesn't like to lose millions. A sale to a hedge fund or a right-wing media billionaire like Murdoch would further devastate the newspaper. Or Bezos could close it for good.

Post lovers like me hope the newspaper survives and flourishes once more.

 

 

 

 

 

Doris Kearns Goodwin renews 1960s vision for Atlanta History Center audience

Doris Kearns Goodwin's "An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s" also speaks for the generation that came of age during that turbulent decade.

Those who were young in the 1960s strongly remember the events for which the 81-year-old presidential historian gives inside views, based on the archives and recollections of her late husband, Richard Goodwin, a speechwriter for John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Robert F. Kennedy.

Goodwin's book is based on her late husband's memorabilia that was stored in multiple boxes at their  home in Concord, Mass. Before his death, Richard and Doris Kearns Goodwin examined the massive amount of material, sharing their experiences as White House insiders.

The memoir tells of the exciting early days of the Kennedy presidency, Richard Goodwin's work for Johnson and his split with him over the Vietnam War and Goodwin's service to the campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy after Johnson decided not to seek re-election in 1968.

Doris Kearns Goodwin gives warm views of Johnson, who led passage of landmark civil rights legislation after JFK's assassination. She served on Johnson's White House staff and frequently visited the former president during his later years, helping him write him memoirs.

An aging crowd of 700 recently packed the Atlanta History Center ballroom for a discussion between Goodwin and Valerie Jackson, former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson's widow.

As Goodwin remembered her love for her husband and presented anecdootes about their public service careers, members of the audience sat rapt as if reliving the promising days of their youths. Many no doubt felt regret about the failures of 1960s idealism.

Goodwin assured the group that the the 1960s vision of freedom and justice is a also an unfinished love story that still can be fulfilled.

 

On the road again on Alabama's I-65

Travelers packed Love's truck stop in Evergreen, Ala.

It had been a rough morning on I-65.

On our way back to Atlanta from a weekend wedding in Louisiana, traffic stalled for two hours north of Mobile.

A long line of cars, trucks and SUVs waited in the rising heat, sometimes progressing a few yards, then stopping again.  A trucker walking past our car informed us that eight people had been killed in an accident eight miles ahead, near the Creola exit.

During the wait, we searched our I-phones for scraps of news. A Mobile TV station and newspaper had reports from hours before, when the crash occurred, but no information about when then road would be cleared. At last, our patience wearing thin, we moved forward. Up ahead at the crash site, grim-faced rescue workers headed back to their vehicles past a flipped-over minivan that had burned.  

At the truck stop Arbys, unhealthy-looking white people in tank tops, shorts, T-shirts and flip-flops ordered soft drinks, shakes and sandwiches. Trump supporters, I assumed. A few black workers gave their orders. I wondered if they would turn out for Biden.

I-65 from Mobile to Montgomery passes old pulp wood towns, fast-food and fuel clusters, Harper Lee's Monroeville, the Hank Williams museum at his birthplace of Georgiana, and the state prison at Atmore. The highway gives a tutorial in the state's geography and economic history.

Over the years traveling from Atlanta to Baton Rouge, I've grown fond of the highway with its restaurants, gasoline convenience stores, bridges and rivers and Jesus billboards. Alabama might be backward, but the old Confederate state has excellent rest stops and information for tourists. And the Robert Trent Jones golf trail.

In the Arby's, I hoped that me and my fellow citizens could find more common ground than a liking for jamocha milkshakes.

 

Willie Mays was peacemaker in notorious Juan Marichal-John Roseboro altercation

Along with his magnificent baseball gifts, Willie Mays was known as a peacekeeper.

Mays, who died Tuesday at age 93 in Palo Alto, Calif., defused one of the ugliest incidents in baseball history, Giants pitcher Juan Marichal's clubbing of Dodgers catcher John Roseboro on Aug. 22, 1965.

The National League pennant race between the bitter rivals Dodgers and Giants moved to San Francisco's Candlestick Park on that warm summer afternoon. Dodgers ace Sandy Koufax took the mound against Marichal, both eventual Hall of Famers along with Mays and the Giants' Willie McCovey.

In the early going, both pitchers threw at opposing hitters. After Marichal knocked down the Dodgers' Maury Wills in the second inning, Koufax threw a fastball over Mays' head to the backstop in the bottom of the inning. Home plate umpire Shag Crawford warned that the next close pitch would bring an ejection.

Roseboro escalated matters in the third inning with Marichal at bat. After hurling a fastball for a strike, Koufax on his second pitch threw a ball inside. Resuming the duel between the two teams, Roseboro on his return throw to Koufax buzzed the ball close to Marichal's face. Marichal claimed the ball clipped his ear.

The enraged Marichal turned, and the men shouted expletives to each other. At last, Marichal raised his bat and struck Roseboro in the head.

Both benches cleared, and a melee broke out. As the fighting escalated, Mays calmed down the wounded Roseboro, a close friend, and escorted him to the Dodgers' dugout. That defused the nasty situation, and the game resumed after a 14-minute delay.

"They can thank Mays that there wasn't a real riot out there," Dodgers outfielder Lou Johnson told the Los Angeles Times. "If it wasn't for Willie Mays, it could have been a lot worse. Willie did a helluva job stopping the battle."

Later in the inning, Mays hit a three-run home run off Koufax, giving the Giants a 4-2 lead and an eventual win.

Mays made the difference that afternoon, as a ballplayer and a man of peace.

 

Farewell Willie Mays, often called baseball's greatest player

Willie Mays valiantly sought to outrace time, but even the noblest of hearts give out in the end.  

The star Giants center fielder died Tuesday afternoon at age 93, the oldest living member of baseball's Hall of Fame. Many consider him baseball's all-time greatest player.

Like contemporary standout Henry Aaron, who preceded him in death by three years, Mays rose from brutally segregated Alabama to baseball stardom, at first playing in the Negro Leagues in their final years after the integration of major league baseball, leading to the arrival of Mays and Aaron's great generation of black players.

Larry Doby, the American League's first black player, was another Negro League veteran. Doby figured in Mays' most famous play, "The Catch" in the first game of the 1954 World Series.

I mainly knew Mays, my boyhood hero, through books and magazines. His San Francisco Giants rarely appeared on national TV, unlike the Yankees of my other baseball idol, Mickey Mantle. I was too young to remember Mays' marvelous early years with the New York Giants, who moved to the West Coast after the 1957 season in tandem with the Brooklyn Dodgers' relocation to Los Angeles.

One of my favorite childhood memories is watching the Major League All-Star game, then played during the day. Off from school for the summer, I'd sit in our family living room in air-conditioned comfort, thrilled as the players stood along the first base and third base foul lines for pregame introductions. My heart beat faster when Mays' name was announced to the cheering crowd.

For me, he was already a historic legend. I'd checked out many books at the East Baton Rouge Parish library that told about his early stardom as the Say Hey Kid of the New York Giants, how he played stickball with neighborhood kids in Harlem before heading to games at the Polo Grounds, how his crusty manager Leo Durocher had reassured him after his early failures as a rookie in 1951, the year of my birth.

I was most fascinated by accounts of his famous catch in the eighth inning of the World Series' first game on the sunny afternoon of Sept. 29, 1954.

Mays raced back in the spacious Polo Grands to pull down a long smash by the Cleveland Indians' Vic Wertz. Catching the drive at the wall, about 420 feet from home plate, Mays whirled and threw to the infield, preventing the Indians' Doby from scoring from second base.

The catch and throw preserved a 2-2 tie. The Giants won the game on Dusty Rhodes' 10th inning home run, leading to the Giants sweeping the heavily favored Indians in the series.

A photo captures the moment of eternity before Mays makes the catch. Wearing his number 24, his back to the infield, he races toward the wall, his glove opening as the ball descends.

He said later that the play was already happening in his mind: the catch, the throw.

A black and white video shows him making the play just as he'd imagined, instantly understanding how to conquer physics.

 

 

 

 

 

T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock" first appeared in June 2015

A new poetic voice arrived 109 years ago this month.

T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock" was published in the June 1915 issue of Poetry magazine, Eliot's first professional publication.

Poet Ezra Pound persuaded Poetry editor Harriet Monroe to print "Prufock," which like Wordsworth and Coleridge's "Lyrical Ballads" 100 years before heralded a revolutionary change in poetic language.

Disturbing for such a young poet, Eliot captures the middle-aged disillusion of Prufock, whose first-person narration gives a 20th century echo of Dante's "The Inferno." The poem contains several allusions to Dante's masterwork, as well as to poems by Eliot's beloved English metaphysical poets.

Pound later edited Eliot's epic poem "The Wasteland," published in 1922. While "The Wasteland" is regarded as one of the essential works of modernism, "Profock" set the stage with its evocative language expressing a generation's loss of faith.

The poem's epigraph comes from Canto 27 of Dante's "Inferno," in which the poet asks prominent Florentine citizen Guido da Montefeltro what crimes he'd committed to be condemned to hell.

Montefeltro replies, "If I thought that my reply would be to someone who would ever return to earth, this flame would remain without further movement; but as no one has ever returned alive from this gulf, if what I hear is true, I can answer you with no fear of infamy."

This is an ironic reflection of Prufock's expression of his alienation from the world. 

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question ...

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

 

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

 

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

 

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,

Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

 

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

 

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —

(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —

(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

 

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

               So how should I presume?

 

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

               And how should I presume?

 

And I have known the arms already, known them all—

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare

(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)

Is it perfume from a dress

That makes me so digress?

Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

               And should I then presume?

               And how should I begin?

 

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

 

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

 

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Smoothed by long fingers,

Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,

Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,

I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

 

And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

Would it have been worth while,

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

To have squeezed the universe into a ball

To roll it towards some overwhelming question,

To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—

If one, settling a pillow by her head

               Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;

               That is not it, at all.”

 

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—

And this, and so much more?—

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:

Would it have been worth while

If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

And turning toward the window, should say:

               “That is not it at all,

               That is not what I meant, at all.”

 

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

Almost, at times, the Fool.

 

I grow old ... I grow old ...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

 

Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

 

I do not think that they will sing to me.

 

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

 

 

 

 

San Francisco writer David Talbot recovering from severe stroke

Wishing the best for San Francisco writer and historian David Talbot, who suffered a life-threatening stroke on June 2, his family announced.

The stricken author is recovering in the hospital, according to his son Joe Talbot, who directed and co-wrote the award-winning film "The Last Black Man in San Francisco."

A Go-Fund-Me account has been set up to help the 72-year-old author pay his expenses. The stroke left Talbot unable to write, halting the small income he received from writing articles and books.

Talbot, co-founder of the news web site Salon and author of the San Francisco history "Season of the Witch," also suffered a stroke in November 2017. His "Heaven and Hell: The Story of My Stroke" gives an inspiring account of his recovery.

Published in 2012, "Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror and Deliverance in the City of Love" covers San Francisco's volatile 1960s and '70s, from the Summer of Love to the assassinations of Mayor George Mascone and Supervisor Harvey Milk and the Jonestown Massacre. The book also praises the San Francisco 49ers's Super Bowl success for helping the city heal from its traumatic events. 

Talbot's "The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, The CIA and the Rise of America's Secret Government," accuses Dulles' CIA of conspiracy in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

In columns on Facebook, Talbot has accused San Francisco's wealthy business class and well-paid Silicon Valley workers of raising housing costs and driving the middle class out of the city. He supported progressive District Attorney Chesea Boudin, ousted in a recall election, and frequently lambastes Mayor London Breed, whom he sees as a tool of the city's plutocrats.

Drawing the ire of Democratic Party supporters, Talbot ardently supports Robert F. Kennedy's independent presidential campaign.

Downplaying Kennedy's anti-vaccine beliefs, Talbot asserts that Kennedy is the only candidate challenging the country's ruling class of military contractors, Wall Street financiers, billionaires and petroleum companies.

Talbot and his wife, Camille Peri, recently disclosed plans to leave their longtime home and move to a smaller residence. The family in announcing Talbot's stroke asks for assistance in finding a small apartment for the couple after Talbot leaves the hospital.

The stroke has silenced one of San Francisco's distinctive voices. Talbot readers hope he'll soon be back championing the city he loves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lord Byron receives new attention marking 200th anniversary of his death

It's springtime for Lord Byron.

On April 19, the small coterie of Byron followers venerated the 200th anniversary of the Romantic poet's death. The event sparked an outpouring of books and articles on the author notorious for his sexual exploits and revered for his heroism in fighting for Greek independence. 

Then one of the most famous celebrities in Europe, the swashbuckling author of the epics "Don Juan" and "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" died on April 19, 1824, in Missolonghi, Greece, where he'd been fighting for Greek freedom from the Ottoman Empire.

Just 36, the poet caught pneumonia while riding in chilly weather. His physicians decided to treat him by drawing blood, causing his death. 

Educated at Trinity College in Cambridge, George Gordon, Lord Byron was exiled from England because of his sexual misconduct. He spent his last years traveling across Europe and engaging in abusive affairs with a number of women and men.

One of the new books, "Byron's Travels," edited by Fiona Stafford, traces his journeys through poems, letters and journals. Excerpts from "Don Juan" match his real-life adventures.

Andrew Stauffer also draws on Lord Byron's work in his new biography, "Byron: A Life in 10 Letters." Stauffer's selection from the 3,000 letters Byron wrote during his lifetime illustrates the major events of the poet's life. 

A letter written in 1819 to his friend and publisher John Murray, who also published Jane Austen and John Keats, gives scandalous details of Byron's romantic affair in Venice with the young married woman Margarita Cogni.

The letter blazes with intimate revelations and shocking misogynistic descriptions of Cogni, according to a review in the Times Literary Supplement.

Byron might be best known today for sharing a home with fellow Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and Shelley's finance, Mary Wolstonecraft Godwin, at Lake Geneva during the cold and rainy summer of 1816.

One stormy evening, Byron suggested that he and his friends compose ghost stories. The soon to be Mary Shelley's story formed the basis of her famous novel "Frankenstein, Or the Modern Prometheus."

Along with reviews of the new books on Byron, the Times Literary Supplement in a special issue April 12 published an essay about the 1924 ceremonies in Greece honoring Lord Byron on the 100th anniversary of his death. The article is accompanied by John Drinkwater's poem "Ode to Byron," recited during the event.

The TLS also published for the first time two recently discovered letters from Byron to Cambridge friends John Cam Hobhouse and Francis Hodgson.

In his letter to his close friend Hobhouse, sent from Athens, Greece on April 28th 1811, Lord Byron announces "I am here with a party of Englishmen mostly your acquaintances & during the winter we have had balls, feasting, masquerading (during the carnival) & of course intriguing in all directions."

Byron's flamboyant life anticipated that of modern rock stars. Let the Byron revival flourish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Griffin Dunne receives widespread attention for his memoir "The Friday Afternoon Club"

Griffin Dunne's drawing intense media anticipation for his book "The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir," to be published next week.

In a chorus of media interviews, the actor says completing the memoir fulfills one of his lifetime goals. He still wishes to learn to play a musical instrument and master Spanish.

The scion of a famed literary and Hollywood family, Dunne felt immense pressure to finish the book following the acclaimed literary careers of his father, Dominick, his uncle, John Gregory Dunne, and his aunt, Joan Didion.

Interviewed this week by New York magazine, People magazine, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian and the Literary Hub, Dunne says he felt compelled to revisit the murder of his sister Dominique, a rising young actress slain by her ex-boyfriend, John Thomas Sweeney, in 1982.

The 22-year-old actress's buoyant spirit still shines against the darkness of her death, Dunne says. The book's title comes from the name of his sister's acting group.

Vanity Fair in a recent issue published Dunne's recollections of his sister's murder, and the trial of her killer, which outraged his family.

Sweeney, accused of murder, was convicted of manslaughter, serving three and a half years in prison. Dominick Dunne in an article for Vanity Fair magazine divulged his disgust for Sweeney's attorneys and the presiding judge. The piece launched his spectacular career covering celebrity trials for the magazine.

Griffin says he was initially incensed by his father's success stemming from the trial of his sister's killer. Griffin eventually reached a rapprochement with his father on that and other points of contention. His father died in 2007 at age 83.

The book recounts Griffin's Hollywood childhood. Dominick, a closeted homosexual, built a successful career as a producer before wrecking his insider status with an insult of super-agent Sue Mengers published in the Hollywood Reporter.

After years of destitution, Dominick Dunne rebuilt his life writing for Vanity Fair and making frequent TV appearances as a crime expert.

Griffin as a youth often attended parties given by his aunt and uncle, renowned Hollywood scriptwriters who never lost their standing.

In the book, he recalls being saved from drowning by Sean Connery and having his girlfriend hit upon by Roman Polanski, Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty.

"Like three wolves sniffing a baby lamb," he told New York magazine's Shawn McCreesh.

Griffin discloses in the interviews that the book revisits his up and down acting career. After initial success in Hollywood films and on the New York stage, Dunne struggled with lackluster roles and substance abuse.

The 69-year-old has undergone a resurgence in recent years, producing and appearing in the documentary "Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold," a retrospective of his late aunt's career. He also starred in the popular NBC hit "This Is Us."

Now, he's matching his family's literary radiance.