Writer Leslie Epstein

DATE July 17, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Leslie Epstein talks about his new novel, "San Remo
Drive"
DAVE DAVIES, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, sitting in for Terry Gross.

Novelist Leslie Epstein is the son of Hollywood screenwriter Philip Epstein,
who with his identical twin brother, Julius, gave us "Casablanca," "Arsenic
and Old Lace," "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "The Man Who Came to Dinner."
Epstein grew up on San Remo Drive in Hollywood with neighbors like Gregory
Peck and Joseph Cotten. But when he came of age, he moved East to attend
Yale. He became a Rhodes scholar and tried his hand at writing plays but
settled on writing fiction. Epstein now directs the creative writing program
at Boston University. His novels include "King of the Jews," set in the
Holocaust, and "Pandaemonium," about a dictatorial filmmaker. In his new
novel, "San Remo Drive," Epstein has written his most autobiographical book.
Terry spoke with Leslie Epstein earlier this week. He begins the interview
with a reading based on a real incident near the end of World War II when his
father, named Norman in the book, takes his son to the Warner Bros. studio.

Mr. LESLIE EPSTEIN (Author, "San Remo Drive"): (Reading) `Norman and I
entered a sound stage hand in hand. The building was as large as a hanger, so
perhaps I was not surprised to see an aircraft or, at any rate, a
cross-section of an aircraft inside. To my practiced eye, it looked like the
cockpit of a Grumman Hellcat or a P-38. It sat on a pair of sawhorses and
there was a man inside. He wore a leather helmet, goggles and a flying scarf.
The makeup people were crowded around him applying last-minute touches of
paint. The lighting people took readings, and the camera people stretched a
tape to his nose. Then the crowd stepped away and the pilot reached upward to
slam the canopy shut. I squeezed Norman's hand. From somewhere, a voice
said, "OK, everybody, we're ready to go. And, action!" Flames shot up around
us. Thick smoke filled the air. The poor airman at this catastrophe was
banging on the inside of the Plexiglas. His mouth opened and shut. That
meant he was screaming. Again, he pounded, his fists turning raw and red. He
was trapped. The flames leaped higher, seeming to engulf him. The black
smoke curled over the truncated wings. I stood trembling. Norman's hand
gripped my shoulder. If he had not restrained me, I might have flung myself
forward, lunging at the cockpit in order to pry the pilot free.

At the same time, I was fully aware that three stage hands lay on their backs
beneath the dive bomber making the smoke and flames. Nor had a I failed to
notice that the actor's legs dropped out of the center of the rocking fuselage
and rested comfortably on the ground. I was without knowing it split in two,
part of me wanting to break out in laughter at the comedy of the scene even as
my heart pounded in anguish for the doomed man. I didn't know then what I
know now, but every artist must seek to draw these separate halves of himself
and of those who view his work together.'

TERRY GROSS, host:

Were you having that kind of divided reaction as a kid when you actually saw a
scene like this being shot?

Mr. EPSTEIN: I didn't have a divided reaction then. I don't believe I'm
interpreting what I think I must have felt later on. In fact, that's one of
the whole themes of this book, how maturity and working things through in art
can change the way we saw things when we actually experienced them.

GROSS: What decade did you grow up in and what was the state physically of
Hollywood at that time? How much of it was billed?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Well, I was born in 1938, and Warner Bros. was there and
flourishing. In fact, Jack Warner put huge red crosses on his sound stages so
that enemy bombers during World War II would think it was a hospital. Kind of
typical of Jack Warner, I think. So the drive out to the valley through the
Sepulveda Tunnel and looking down from the mountains to the studios, those
studios were quite complete then in the '40s. And I grew up through the 1940s
and '50s, and that's the period that this book, at least the first half of
this book, is concerned with.

GROSS: Now your novel "San Remo Drive" is about someone who grows up in a
mansion on San Remo Drive and then later as an adult buys back that mansion
and moves in again.

Mr. EPSTEIN: Yes.

GROSS: You grew up in a mansion on San Remo Drive?

Mr. EPSTEIN: 1341. We bought the house in 1947 from the actress Mary Astor
and we lived in it for about 10 or 11 years until we had to sell it.

GROSS: Why don't you describe what it looked like when you lived in it?

Mr. EPSTEIN: It was from the outside sort of Southern Colonial and Georgian
together, red brick, tall white columns in an L shape. I can tell you a
really interesting story about it. I didn't in real life buy the house back,
though in the novel I do. But what I did do, my mother died in December of
2000, and on the day she was buried, I went back to that house and I, with my
heart in my mouth, walked up to the front door through these vast lawns and
knocked. And an elderly woman came out, and I explained who I was. And she
said, `Oh, I remember Lillian Epstein. Won't you come in?' And I went
inside the house and no sooner had I entered then I said, `Wait a minute.
Isn't that our dining room table?' She said, `Yes.' `Isn't that our credenza
from 50 years before,' and she said, `Yes. And look, dear, there's your
mother's baby grand.'

And then she led me around through the living room, which I knew so well, to a
small bar and music room area and threw open the cabinet doors. There was the
Capehart, which is an old-fashioned machine that used to pick up records and
turn them upside down and play them. And it was there, and so were the 78 RPM
records that I used to sneak down at midnight from my room upstairs to conduct
in the dark. Nothing had changed in that house. She was like Miss Havisham
in "Great Expectations." And somehow, imaginatively, I took over that house
again at that moment, and I knew that I would put that moment in a different
form into the novel, and I did.

GROSS: Why did your family sell the house?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Well, my father died in 1952, and we simply could not afford to
keep it up. I mean, much of this I describe in the novel. And then when I
went off to college, my mother had remarried briefly the man that's described
in the first chapter of this book, a charlatan, and he took some of her money.
And I went off to college and we simply couldn't afford to keep the house up
and so sold it.

GROSS: When your family first bought the mansion on San Remo Drive, which
films most helped pay for it?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Well, I think "Casablanca" had come out four or five years
before, then my father and uncle, Julie Epstein, were made producers as well
as writers, and the first film they produced was "Mr. Skeffington." And so I
think a lot of those early Warner Bros. films of the '40s--"Mr. Skeffington,"
"The Man Who Came to Dinner," "Arsenic and Old Lace" and, of course,
"Casablanca"--those things helped pay for the house, though I have seen the
budget for "Casablanca" and they were paid each $35,000 for it.

GROSS: And they had no points in it or anything like that.

Mr. EPSTEIN: No.

GROSS: I guess that was the days before points.

Mr. EPSTEIN: It sure was. My uncle spent the last part of his life lobbying
Congress to do something about films done before 1948. He and my family and
my children have never gotten a penny from "Casablanca."

GROSS: Which is one of the most famous movies and most respected movies ever
made.

Mr. EPSTEIN: Thank you. I think so.

GROSS: Yeah. So who were your neighbors when you were growing up?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Well, my neighbors were--I have a scene in the novel talking
about going up San Remo Drive to trick-or-treat.

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. EPSTEIN: And it's an accurate scene. Thomas Mann lived right up the
block. I remember him walking his dog on San Remo Drive. Occasionally he
came to dinner, standing stiffly and I think shyly in a corner. Though I do
remember once my mother said, `Where would you like to sit at table?' and he
said, `Anyplace at all, as long as it is next to my charming hostess.' So he
had a lot of Old World manners. He lived up the block with his dog. Further
up San Remo Drive was the nicest man in the world who of course just died, and
that was Gregory Peck. Whenever we trick-or-treated, he always came himself
to the door, and I can remember now from over 50 years, you know, 55 years
ago, he would give us these gingerbread men, perhaps right out of his oven. I
don't know. But he was very kind. The guy who was never home was the actor
Joseph Cotten and we always soaped his windows.

GROSS: No kidding.

Mr. EPSTEIN: Yes, we did.

GROSS: Now I can't imagine that Thomas Mann put on a Wolfman costume for the
trick-or-treaters...

Mr. EPSTEIN: No, he...

GROSS: ...to greet the trick-or-treaters on Halloween. What about Gregory
Peck? Did he dress up or anything?

Mr. EPSTEIN: No. I think he actually, in my mind's eye, and it's not an
accurate eye, over 50 years perhaps, but he was wearing a cardigan sweater or
something like that.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. EPSTEIN: But he always came to the door himself, and he was a real
gentleman.

DAVIES: Novelist Leslie Epstein talking with Terry Gross. We'll be back
after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

DAVIES: Let's return to Terry's interview with Leslie Epstein. His new
novel, "San Remo Drive," is based on his experiences growing up in Hollywood.
His father and uncle were the screenwriting team behind "Casablanca," "Yankee
Doodle Dandy" and "Arsenic and Old Lace."

GROSS: What are some of your memories of "Casablanca"? You were alive when
the movie was made. You were pretty young, but...

Mr. EPSTEIN: Yeah.

GROSS: ...do you have memories of it being made or of seeing it for the first
time?

Mr. EPSTEIN: I remember seeing it for the first time because it was shown on
a 16mm projector in our living room and a number of people had gathered. And
I remember seeing it there. But I have no memory--I would have been too young
perhaps to remember '42. I was only four years old. But I somehow have
the--I can see the old projector set up in the living room and I can see it on
the screen that was set up in the living room.

GROSS: Did your father talk to you about what inspired him to write it or,
you know, did your uncle discuss that with you?

Mr. EPSTEIN: They had a strange attitude toward "Casablanca" and I don't know
if I can use their language on the air, but I'll try. Two different phrases
they used. I mean, they would always be embarrassed because they had
written--you know, my uncle wrote 50 wonderful films, but it would always be
"Casablanca," "Casablanca." And he would say, `Aw, it's just the same old
crap that we used in "Algiers,"' for example. And, in fact, the actual phrase
they used was `It's just a lot of slick shit.' But they used that, and yet at
the same time, I know my uncle. When there was a dispute at one time when
Howard Koch, who got some credit for "Casablanca," in fact shared the Academy
Award, wrote a book falsely claiming more credit than he deserved, my uncle on
the one hand saying, `Aw, who cares? It's just a lot of crap,' went to bed
for a week.

GROSS: Well, you know, let's face it, it's a terrifically written film and,
you know, not just the story but the dialogue, the actual language of it is
great. And it's very hard-boiled, particularly for its time. And, you know,
Bogart's the hardened man who seemingly cares about nothing, neither people,
nor politics, but beneath that tough exterior, we see he's capable of great
self-sacrifice for love and for country. Had they written any screenplay that
hard-boiled before?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Well, they did a lot of films with James Cagney and John
Garfield, and I think Cagney, Garfield and Bogart, you take the three of
them together, they're exactly the sort of ideal that you described: worldly,
tough-talking, no-nonsense, but underneath with something like a heart of
gold.

GROSS: Which Cagney films?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Let me see, "Strawberry Blonde" and "Yankee Doodle Dandy."

GROSS: I grew up on "Yankee Doodle Dandy" because it was always on Million
Dollar Movie, you know, one of the UHF kind of channels in New York. It
wasn't UHF, but it was the equivalent of it. Would show the same movies over
all week. One movie would play all week. And many times, that movie that
week was "Yankee Doodle Dandy," which I just saw again on AMC or TCM. It's
probably TCM.

Mr. EPSTEIN: So you had a wonderful Hollywood childhood, too.

GROSS: Oh, yeah.

Mr. EPSTEIN: I can tell you a story about that. You won't see their names,
Julie or Phil's name, on "Yankee Doodle Dandy" because they gave credit to a
friend who needed the credit. And it became sort of a scandal, and Jimmy
Cagney took a full-page ad in Variety saying the real writers of this film
are.

GROSS: Wow. Why did they do this favor for the friend? What was the
friend's story?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Well, you see, this was assembly line Hollywood. And films were
put together, I think wonderfully put together, by groups of people. I mean,
"Casablanca," for example, I mean, everything came together in the right way.
Not just the wonderful dialogue, but I mean, even the lighting in that film
was perfect. So if you're working on an assembly line, I think that maybe for
you, it is all the same old crap, you know. And it after all didn't become an
American icon until the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, began to
show it and the Harvard students took it up in the mid-'50s. And ever since,
of course, it's been "Casablanca." But before that, it wasn't. So I don't
think that they thought they were writing what's officially supposed to the
second greatest American film, but if you ask me, "Citizen Kane" is somewhat
overrated.

GROSS: When your father and uncle wrote "Casablanca," was there a message
they wanted to give about the war? I mean, was it a conscious attempt to send
this message out?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Well, if you give me a minute, I can give, I think, an
interesting answer to that. Hollywood turned its back on all Jewish aspects
of the war. I mean, after all, they were making the American Dream. That
dream couldn't be a Jewish dream. So the word `Jew' or `Jewish' does not
appear in any film about a domestic topic during the war, through the entire
war, except one and I am proud to say it's "Mr. Skeffington." Claude Rains in
that film tells his daughter, `You should go live with your mother because I'm
Jewish.' And in fact the American Jewish Committee and B'nai B'rith all
complained, `How could you bring up these divisions at a time like this when
we're fighting a war?' And President Roosevelt, you know, whom we all admired
enormously then, he had a board that oversaw things and was very critical of
that mention of domestic anti-Semitism during a time of war.

In "Casablanca" the words `Jew' and `Jews' and `Judaism' are never used, and I
asked my uncle about that. He said, `The word "refugees" is the first word in
the film, "Refugees are moving across Europe,"' and there's a map and a globe
turning, remember at the beginning of the film?

GROSS: Right.

Mr. EPSTEIN: And he also told me that the couple who come to the gaming table
at Rick's and then who Rick arranges to have win, a story by the way based on
something that happened to my mother at a roulette table, that couple is meant
to stand for Jewish refugees. Now they were Bulgarian in the film and
Bulgaria is one of the few countries that protected its Jews. So maybe that
was a bad choice. But in my uncle's mind, it definitely was meant to refer to
the plight of the Jews through refugees and through that young couple who were
helped by Rick at the roulette table.

GROSS: Now I remember reading that a lot of the extras in "Casablanca" were
actually refugees who had come to America. Were many of them Jewish refugees?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Yes. In fact, I think perhaps one of the greatest actors in the
world Marcel Dalio, who stars in I think the greatest film ever made, which
is not "Casablanca" but is "Rules of the Game" by Renoir. He also starred in
maybe the second greatest film ever made, which is "Grand Illusion." Marcel
Dalio plays the croupier in "Casablanca."

GROSS: Oh.

Mr. EPSTEIN: So here's this great actor whom, of course, the film industry
tried to help these people. They paid them a hundred dollars a week. They
paid writers. Thomas Mann's brother, Heinrich, was paid a hundred dollars
a week, really, to be in an office and write things that everyone knew would
never be made into films. But that was the good side of the industry trying
to help these people as best they can.

GROSS: Wow. You know, in spite of how inspiring "Casablanca" turns out to
be, your father was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee
during the McCarthy era, and there's a scene like this in your novel. In the
novel, the interrogator says, `Mr. Jack Warner indicated that you were a
suspect in his eyes, because,' and I quote, `"he is always on the side of the
underdog. Do you wish to respond to that, or do you wish to make a
statement?"' Did Jack Warner actually say that about your father?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Yes, he did. Jack Warner named my father and uncle as
subversives, and they received a letter from Rankin, the head of the House
Un-American Activities Committee, and the letter said--it was a two-part
questionnaire. The first part said: Have you ever been a member of a
subversive organization? And the second part said: If so, name that
organization. And my father and uncle filled out the questionnaire for the
HUAC. Have you ever been a member of a subversive organization? They said
yes. Name that organization. They put down Warner Bros. Now in real life,
the committee knew who they were up against, and they never heard from the
committee again. In the novel, however, as you know, I expanded that scene,
and had them turn the tables on the committee in ways that I essentially made
up. Though there were people who bravely did that kind of thing before the
committee.

GROSS: You know that recent story, the recent news revelation that HUAC
basically--tell me if I have this wrong--that HUAC basically declined to
publicly interrogate certain people who they thought would be too clever and
too witty for the US interrogators?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Yes. That was...

GROSS: Do you think your father was in that category?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Well, that was actually Joe McCarthy, you know, who browbeat the
easy guys and who stayed away from the tough ones. And I think that HUAC had
the same reaction to my father and uncle. They knew they were not going to be
intimidated from that questionnaire. And you know, it is true that Jack
Warner--they said, `Well, why did you name the Epstein boys?' as everyone
always called them. And he said, `Ah, they were always on the side of the
underdog,' as if that were somehow un-American.

GROSS: Yeah, that's supposed to be part of the whole American thing, fighting
for the underdog.

Mr. EPSTEIN: And you certainly see it in films. And you certainly see it in
a film like "Casablanca."

GROSS: All right.

Mr. EPSTEIN: Now Jack Warner used to name everybody he had a contract dispute
with as a subversive.

DAVIES: Novelist Leslie Epstein. His new novel is "San Remo Drive," based on
his childhood in Hollywood. He'll be back in the second half of the show.
I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

Unidentified Vocalist: (Singing) I'm the kid that's all the candy. I'm a
Yankee-Doodle-Dandy. I'm glad I am.

Group of Vocalists: (In unison) (Singing) So's Uncle Sam.

Unidentified Vocalist: (Singing) I'm a real live Yankee-Doodle, made my name
and fame and boodle just as Mr. Doodle did by riding on a pony. I love to
listen to the Dixey strain. I long to see the girl I left behind me. That
ain't a josh. She's a Yankee, by gosh.

Group of Vocalists: (In unison) (Singing) Oh, say, can you see?

Unidentified Vocalist: (Singing) Anything about a Yankee, that's a phoney.

Group of Vocalists: (In unison) (Singing) Little Johnny Jones, the jockey
from the USA.

Unidentified Vocalist: (Singing) Will ride the pony Yankee-Doodle English
Derby day.

Group of Vocalists: (In unison) (Singing) ...(Unintelligible) broken records
every track at every meet.

Unidentified Vocalist: (Singing) So Yankee-Doodle's going to be the boy they
have to beat.

Group of Vocalists: (In unison) (Singing) Sportsmen of the British Isles who
followed his career have offered Johnny anything to keep him over here.

Unidentified Vocalist: (Singing) But all the money in the Bank of England
couldn't pay enough to keep young Johnny Jones away from old Grogway.

Group of Vocalists: (In unison) (Singing) If you want to take a tip that's
sure to ...(unintelligible) your thing...

Unidentified Vocalist: (Singing) Have your houses mortgaged. Hawk your
watches. Pawn your rings.

Group of Vocalists: (In unison) (Singing) And put it all on Yankee-Doodle.
Johnny Jones is up.

Unidentified Vocalist: (Singing) I'm going to give America the English Derby
Cup.

Group of Vocalists: (In unison) (Singing) He's going to give America the
English Derby Cup.

Unidentified Vocalist: (Singing) I'm a Yankee-Doodle-Dandy, Yankee-Doodle do
or die, a real live nephew of my Uncle Sam, born on the Fourth of July. I've
got a Yankee-Doodle sweetheart. She's my Yankee-Doodle joy. Yankee-Doodle
came to London just to ride the ponies. I am that Yankee-Doodle boy.

Unidentified Vocalists: (In unison) (Singing) He's a Yankee-Doodle-Dandy, a
Yankee-Doodle do or die...

(Credits)

(Soundbite of music)

DAVIES: Coming up, we continue our conversation with writer Leslie Epstein.
When his father died, his Uncle Julie, his father's identical brother, became
a second father to him. And Maureen Corrigan reviews the debut novel "The
Bug." That and more.

(Soundbite of music)

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, sitting in for Terry Gross.

Let's continue our interview with novelist Leslie Epstein. He grew up in
Hollywood in a mansion on San Remo Drive. His father, Philip, and his uncle,
Julie, wrote the screenplays for such classic American films as "Casablanca,"
"Yankee Doodle Dandy," and "Arsenic and Old Lace." They were not only a
writing team, but also identical twins. Epstein's new book, "San Remo Drive,"
is based on his childhood memories. Terry spoke with him earlier this week.

GROSS: The mother in your novel, "San Remo Drive," is not the most committed
of mothers.

Mr. EPSTEIN: Yes. That...

GROSS: Is she based on your mother?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Yes, she is based on my mother, who, as I said died, I think
December 27th, 2000, and Uncle Julie died three days later. We had two sad
funerals...

GROSS: Oh, yeah.

Mr. EPSTEIN: ...within three days. My mother was a girl who came out from
Atlantic City in the mid-'30s, and was caught up in a dramatic and exciting
life, and she threw huge parties for the Russian ballet when they came to
town. I think she was swept off her feet by Hollywood, and that I think she
loved--I know she loved her children dearly, but she was--I would say it this
way. She was at one and the same time quite distant and all too close, and I
tried to capture that aspect of her, you know, aloof and somewhat seductive at
the same time, a difficult thing for a child to deal with, I think.

GROSS: Were there other people who helped bring you up while she was busy?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Yes. I--we had a series of servants and I tried, in fact, to,
I hope, lovingly portray them in the novel, Arthur and Mary. There's one
chapter in the novel in which Arthur and Mary take my brother and I to
Carlsburg Caverns where in real life they took us to the Grand Canyon. But it
was a strange and sort of excruciatingly embarrassing experience for us
because in the early '50s they were one of the few black couples in all the
Southwest and yet there we were traveling with them. And, of course, there's
the unasked question `Why were our parents not taking us on this family
vacation? Why were the--our butler and our maid doing it?'

GROSS: Did people actually ask you that?

Mr. EPSTEIN: No, but we saw the looks.

GROSS: Right. Your father, Philip Epstein, died when you were 13. What
happened to him?

Mr. EPSTEIN: He was playing tennis on Bud Chilberg's(ph) court, ran back for
a lob, the fence was covered by poison ivy, he got a terrible case of it, they
took codeine, which is a new medicine then, turned the bottle upside down, he
was cured of the poison ivy and two weeks later had a raging cancer and was
dead. The family myth is that, you know, the steroid killed him, though I
don't know if there's any true evidence of that but he very quickly was dead,
and yet his identical twin brother, Julie, lived 60 more years, and so I
just--it's hard to say. For me, the lesson was, though, that no loss is
irreparable, because I'd lost my father, and there he was, Julie, behaving
wonderfully like as my father had, and he did so for another half century.

GROSS: You mean, he became like a father to you?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Very much.

GROSS: When you were young, were you able to tell them apart?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Julie had a bump on his head. And that's how all of us told
them apart. They were bald at a very early age and luckily Julie had this
little bump on his head and that's how we knew. And in photographs now it's
the only way that I can tell them apart. They were--though now that I think
of the influence on me must have been enormous because I married an identical
twin and I'm the father of twin boys.

GROSS: You're kidding?

Mr. EPSTEIN: No. Double trouble everywhere I look.

GROSS: Oh, that's so funny.

Is--so--were your father and brother similar in personality?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Peas in a pod. Eggs in a carton. Yes, they were. They--I
used to--they would come over late to work, that was a terrible sin at--for
Jack Warner, who was always shooting with them and making them come to the
studio at 9 in the morning and--but they always got around it and Julie would
show up on San Remo Drive at around 12:00 and I would listen to them. They
would work in our library and I'd lie down on the carpet outside the door and
I'd hear one of them say, `Yaddedy, yaddedy, yaddedy,' and the other one would
say, `Yaddedy, yaddedy, yaddedy.' And they would both burst out into peals of
laughter. And I'd--lying there, thought to myself, `This isn't a bad way to
live your life, especially by--since 2:30 they were done for the day and
playing tennis.'

GROSS: What was your mother's relationship like with your Uncle Julie when
your Uncle Julie became your father figure?

Mr. EPSTEIN: I can put it to you in one brief story. Uncle Julie went along
on my mother and father's honeymoon.

GROSS: Wow.

Mr. EPSTEIN: Yep. They--those two men were married to each other. They
spent every day of their working lives together, and their playing lives
together, too. Each was married, each raised a family. But I think the true
marriage was between the Epstein boys. And so, you know, my mother, while a
devoted wife and all the rest of it, I think felt excluded from the central
relationship.

GROSS: Was she close to your uncle?

Mr. EPSTEIN: I would say that she became closer to my uncle's second wife,
Ann. They would go down to Santa Monica to the beach every Monday for years
and years. And I think probably because these two women shared that sort of
half estrangement or ostracism that a twin relationship might cause for those
close to them.

GROSS: You talk a little bit about how when your father and uncle were
writing for Hollywood, in the '30s and '40s, you didn't mention Jewish
characters, you didn't identify characters as Jewish, you didn't mention
Judaism, you didn't mention Judaism and Hitler's Germany. Were your parents
very secular?

Mr. EPSTEIN: They were very secular, I think, for two reasons. One, my
grandparents, their parents, were not secular and they put them through Hebrew
school and all the rest of it and I think that that generation, my parents'
generation, many of them thought `We're not going to put our kids through the
kind of nonsense that we went through.' I mean, if you have a secular view,
you see it as nonsense. But I think more importantly, when you're writing the
American Dream, when you're creating Rick in "Casablanca," and dealing with
Jimmy Cagney in after all "Yankee Doodle Dandy," as I said earlier, it's not
going to be a Jewish dream. And I think my brother and I experienced that
secularization of our life, the Americanization of our life, so we had
Christmas trees to the ceiling. We even have, ashamed to say, Easter egg
hunts. And maybe even ham for an Easter dinner. I don't know. But what's
interesting to me is that while I left Judaism--and I've left many things
about my childhood behind. I mean, I went East to college and away; never
went back. I didn't do popular culture. I did sort of academic life at high
literary culture. Turned my back on many things. But I see now clearly with
Judaism through many books my writing career has been a long return to where I
began. Back to an interest in Judaism, "King of the Jews," I guess my
best-known book, deals with the Holocaust directly. And now with this book I
think that subterranean journey back to where I began is complete because I'm
back to Hollywood, back to my family, and back to my own past, and even back
to the very house I lived in.

DAVIES: Novelist Leslie Epstein talking with Terry Gross. We'll be back
after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

Let's return to Terry's interview with Leslie Epstein. His new novel, "San
Remo Drive," is based on his experiences growing up in Hollywood. His father
and uncle were the screenwriting team behind "Casablanca," "Yankee Doodle
Dandy" and "Arsenic and Old Lace."

GROSS: You left Hollywood and went to school in the East. You teach--you
direct the creative writing program at Boston University. And you've done
that for years. So many people are dying to get to Hollywood and they dream
of making it in Hollywood. Why did you want to go to the opposite end of the
country and keep your distance from Hollywood? And do the opposite kind of
writing, write novels, as opposed to screenplays?

Mr. EPSTEIN: Well, you know, Terry, I think I'm discovering that now. I
think that looking at my childhood as I portray it in this book it was a
painful one. And my brother, disturbed in many ways, my mother, aloof, but
all too close--I think that I felt that I had to simply leave all that behind
me. As I said, I became a sort of high literary writer, academic kind of
writer in some of my novels until perhaps this book. I felt that I had to be
the opposite of what I was growing up, and yet, as I said, all the time, I was
secretly returning to it. I have now with this book actually returned. I can
tell you--I mean, one scene I went back--you know, I would often go back to
the family for Thanksgiving dinner at Julie's house. At one point my mother
and my brother, the same two who dominate this novel, really, walk into the
room arm in arm and I saw two tragic masks walking toward me. And I remember
thinking `Now I know why I've gone East. If I hadn't, I'd be wearing that
mask as well.'

GROSS: Talk a little bit more about that.

Mr. EPSTEIN: Well, I think they had a very painful relationship. I think,
you know, my brother, when you--Barty, in the novel, is disturbed in many
ways. I think my mother felt various guilts about that. And the two of them
had a symbiotic relationship. My brother would live far enough away not to be
around all the time, in places like Sacramento, and Santa Barbara, but close
enough to come home, and the two of them were entwined, I think, in tragic
ways. And I think I sensed I had better escape from those tentacles. I've
suddenly remembered a friend of mine who's a psychiatrist said to me, `Leslie,
if your life was anything like the way you depict it in this book, you dodged
a major bullet.'

I didn't know exactly what that meant. I asked him what he meant. I mean,
was I--would I have been an alcoholic, or have various perversions or a
debauched life or--and then I said to him something that shocked me when it
came out of my own mouth--I said, `Or is it simply that in deciding to leave a
bourgeois life, with my own family and my own career, and my poker group, and
my tennis partners, is it that I am leaving that life and therefore giving up
the greatest possible genius in my art?' But as soon as I said that, I
remembered what Flaubert said, which was `Be a bourgeois in your life so you
can be a madman in your work.'

This is, of course, a theme that haunts everybody who writes or who lives in
the arts. Does one have to directly deal with the madnesses and the chaos
within in order to be a great artist? Flaubert says no. And I guess I've put
my chips on the `no' as well.

GROSS: Right. Well, chances are you're leading a better life because of it.
So you had the creative writing program at Boston University. Do many of your
students really want to write for TV and film?

Mr. EPSTEIN: When I first came there--now it's 25 years ago--I thought so,
and, in fact, a couple of them have--Scott Rosenberg, who's a really fine
Hollywood writer now, was one of my students. But most of the students that
I've had--I mean, I'll give you four names--Sue Miller, Arthur Golden, Jumpla
Behari(ph) and Ha Tin. There's a range of writing there from the popular,
books that have had a very wide audience, to Pulitzer Prize winners and
Faulkner prize winners and National Book Award winners. They--I don't sense
in them any real interest in Hollywood, though I know Arthur Golden expects to
have "Memoirs of a Geisha" made into a film and I hope it happens for him. It
would be a wonderful film.

GROSS: One more thing, and that has to do with fame. Your father and uncle
were very famous in the sense that they wrote "Casablanca" and all these other
great films. But they weren't famous in the sense that like no screenwriters
were famous back then. No one...

Mr. EPSTEIN: That's right.

GROSS: ...in the public knew the name of a screenwriter. So they had this
like fame and anonymity at the same time. You know, a lot of writers,
novelists, hope for fame. How does fame figure into what you care about?

Mr. EPSTEIN: I think that my father and uncle had the ideal situation; that
is, enormous respect rather than fame throughout the film industry. We had
our--you know, I describe it in the book, the fox and lox society Sundays(ph),
and there were actors and actresses there, Elizabeth Taylor and Tony Curtis
and others. But it was mainly writers, some directors, some agents. It was
able--one was able to live a much more normal and relaxed and, I think,
healthful life, being on the edges of fame, rather than at the center.

GROSS: Leslie Epstein, thank you so much for talking with us.

Mr. EPSTEIN: Thank you, Terry.

DAVIES: Writer Leslie Epstein. His new novel is "San Remo Drive."

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Review: "Electric Version" by The New Pornographers
DAVE DAVIES, host:

As part of his summer series on the new pop rock revival, rock critic Ken
Tucker comes to The New Pornographers, a Canadian-based band whose recently
released second album, "Electric Version," makes this outfit the most
stylistically diverse and challenging of the groups in the genre.

(Soundbite of music)

THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS: (Singing) Stole a page from your book and a line from
your page and stepped into a lesbian rage. 'Cause you're mine and mine
(unintelligible) to set the staircase again, but...

KEN TUCKER:

That song from the terrific, if somewhat unfortunately named band The New
Pornographers, takes an aphorism from Wittgenstein, "The world is that which
is the case," and twists it into a pop song refrain. Normally I'd view that
as evidence of overweening ambition, or, to put it more bluntly, show-off
pretentiousness, and listen for more damning evidence. Instead, what I hear
is gorgeous open-hearted full-throated music.

(Soundbite of "The Laws Have Changed")

THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS: (Singing) It was crime at the time but the laws, we
changed them. ...(Unintelligible) forever the same ones. Introduce me for
the first time, tell them all through the microphone. Sing all
(unintelligible). What will be revealed today when we peer through the great
unknown from the land of the throne. So we get the chills at the end...

TUCKER: The female open-throat soaring over, under, around and through that
song called "The Laws Have Changed," belongs to Neko Case who turns in a
couple of remarkable performances on this album. I gather that if you
untangle the word web of songwriter Carl Newman on "The Laws Have Changed,"
you can interpret that song as, among other things, a critique of George W.
Bush noblesse oblige, or the lack of it. But honestly, I can't, and on some
level don't want, to get past the pure sound of Neko Case's voice, a kind of
force field of energy that eloquently transcends the cleverness of the
writing. She unleashes it again on "All For Swinging You Around."

(Soundbite of "All For Swinging You Around")

THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS: (Singing) Exploding into national scene, the sounds,
and famously the feeling that you can't speak round, while tearing off another
page of loose change, outrage, it's another perfect day until the night shone.
Exploding into national, the wind did howl, the sky above was thick with rings
of smoke and clouds, and hanging on ...(unintelligible) end of conscious
looseness, is there anything I've missed, as far as you know, as far as you
know? Because it's all for swinging you around. All for swinging you around.

TUCKER: Even when Neko is not on the case, The New Pornographers draw from a
wide variety of influences to pump up the energy in their syntactically dense
lyrics. A good example of this is "The New Face of Zero and One," Carl
Newman's way of talking about loneliness and isolation while working in a
drumstick reference to Adam & The Ants and a melodic punch that, to me, sounds
like a pleasantly warped cross between Elvis Costello and Paul Revere & The
Raiders.

(Soundbite of music)

THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS: (Singing) How two guys to become the new face of zero
and one. Fall into the new line, hanging off the tree for the time being.
Parade of disco to New York, a trail that wants to begin making its way to
Nimbia(ph), making its way to the hallelujahs ...(unintelligible). Parade of
disco to New York, a trail that...

TUCKER: I've made enough comparisons to other bands, other sounds. What
needs emphasizing is The New Pornographers' impeccable self-effacement. Maybe
it's that famous Canadian modesty, but Carl Newman, along with the band's
other chief songwriter, Dan Bejar, sublimate confessional pronouncements or
assertions of their own pop star personalities to concentrate on, as they say
in one song here, `keeping our minds on the sound.' Pornography never sounded
so healthy.

DAVIES: Ken Tucker is critic at large for Entertainment Weekly. He reviewed
"Electric Version" by The New Pornographers.

THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS: (Singing) If you go looking for a testament to use in
verse, variations of the age-old curse, you blame the stations when they play
like a ...(unintelligible). Baby, think twice. Maybe it's not all, maybe
it's not all right. Maybe it's not all, maybe it's not all right.

DAVIES: Coming up, a debut novel that doffs its hat at "Frankenstein." This
is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

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Review: "The Bug" by Ellen Ullman
DAVE DAVIES, host:

Writer Ellen Ullman entered the computer field in the 1980s, when few women
were part of the computing culture. She's the author of a memoir about that
time called "Close To The Machine." She's just published her first novel, "The
Bug," a spooky fantasy set in the early days of personal computers. Book
critic Maureen Corrigan has a review.

MAUREEN CORRIGAN:

Here's a real-life dramatization of the literary term irony. As I was on
deadline, writing my review of "The Bug," which is about the intimate
interdependency between human beings and computers, my own computer froze. In
response, I froze. Then I turned my computer off, pushed in plugs, counted to
ten, and turned it on again. It worked, and so I worked. Who's running who
is just one of the big questions about humans and their personal computers
that "The Bug" ponders.

This intriguing, somewhat sinister novel of ideas doffs its hat to the
grandmother of all literary fiction about artificial life and intelligence,
Mary Shelley's 1818 classic, "Frankenstein." Like "Frankenstein," "The Bug" is
more than just a nuts-and-bolts story about a machine that originated as an
awkward assemblage of used parts and rapidly grew beyond the control of its
creators. Ellen Ullman weds a lively plot to meditations on computer language
and chaos theory. She makes us realize that a lot of us don't have a clue
what we're setting into motion whenever we press our thumbs to that hard drive
on button.

"The Bug" takes place mostly in 1984, when the Apple Mac was introduced, and
personal computers in general were just beginning to catch the attention of us
ordinary folk. One of the narrators of the novel is Roberta Walton, a
newly-minted linguistics PhD who can't find an academic job, and so wisely
takes a position as a software tester at a Silicon Valley start-up. One day,
as she's navigating a new program, Roberta stumbles upon a bug that wipes out
the computer screen when the mouse is moved downward. She brings this bug to
the attention of the alleged creator of the program, Ethan Levin, a fellow
exile from academia who deep into the pure theory of computer science. He
initially dismisses it as just another garden variety glitch. But as months
pass, the bug, now nicknamed The Jester, assumes a demonic personality, often
manifesting itself at crucial demo sessions before the company's potential
clients and investors. The mood darkens as layoffs begin and as Ethan and
Roberta's already meager personal lives totally disintegrate. Ethan in
particular becomes possessed with what the omniscient narrator calls an
intellectual hysteria. We're told that he had this idea that if he fixed the
bug, he could repair his life. All his failures, particularly his
girlfriend's betrayal, would be manageable if only it weren't for this bug,
this flaw, this break in his understanding of how the world was made.

As Ethan loses himself in his past, trying to identify if some misstep in his
own life generated the bug, Roberta tracks it by an alternate route,
committing herself to learning computer code, something she'd always belittled
as beneath her lofty PhD training. Here's how she mystically describes her
conversion. `I was suddenly glad to be freed from the whole morass of
convoluted academic thinking. I had spent months unlearning the desire to be
unique. I was trying to write code so standard in form, so common in
expression that my work ideally could not be distinguished from another
programmer's. I was striving to achieve an odd transparency designed to let
the human reader slip past the code's word-like representation and see as
directly as possible the ephemeral electronic moment of what the program does.
It was a release from the personal, the program, not the programmer.'

I won't reveal the outcome of the search and destroy missions Ethan and
Roberta independently mount, but as you can hear in that last quote, the
process of exploring the deep space within the computer is really more
important than the outcome of "The Bug" in the way it effortlessly transports
readers into strange technical territory and combines aspects of the suspense
novel, supernatural tale and philosophical essay. "The Bug" reminds me of
Colson Whitehead's stunning 1999 novel, "The Intuitionist," which was about,
of all things, elevators, another mundane machine capable of fitfully crashing
and wiping out the wonders it enables.

DAVIES: Maureen Corrigan teaches literature at Georgetown University. She
reviewed "The Bug" by Ellen Ullman.

(Soundbite of music)

(Credits)

DAVIES: For Terry Gross, I'm Dave Davies.

(Soundbite of music)

Announcer: Tapes and transcripts of FRESH AIR are available at
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DAVIES: On the next FRESH AIR, we remember writer Carol Shields. She died
Wednesday after a long battle with breast cancer. Shields won a Pulitzer
prize for her book "The Stone Diaries," which was also a best-seller. Join
us for the next FRESH AIR.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.