WWW.WEDNESDAY

 

WWW. WEDNESDAY asks three questions to prompt you to speak bookishly. To participate, and to see how other book lovers responded, click here. 

PS I no longer participate in WWW.WEDNESDAY via that link because her blog won't accept Blogger comments. I mention this only to save you the frustration I experienced trying to link up.

1. What are you currently reading? Contents Under Pressure by Edna Buchanan. Our narrator is Britt Montero, a reporter on the crime beat of a major Miami newspaper. In the course of doing her job, she finds herself at the center of a big story with major ramifications – a retired football player dies after a run-in with the police. The athlete was black, the cops were white and Cuban. No matter where the story takes her, someone will be pissed. But Britt is a pro and doesn't let the danger deter her. 

 

This book was published in 1992 and it shows. No one has a cell and Britt relies on the phone book. She also believes that being a reporter for an established daily gives her power – after all, she reasons, that paper will land on everyone's porch tomorrow and everybody will read it, no matter what. On the other hand, the big city racial tensions are, unfortunately, timeless.

2. What did you recently finish reading? Dark City Dames: The Women Who Defined Film Noir by Eddie Muller. Profiles of six influential femme fatales. Note I said "influential," which is not the same as famous or successful. None of these six ever became a household name. That's what I appreciated most about this book.

These women worked regularly in Hollywood through the 1940s and 1950s. They supported themselves appearing in the best films they could find. It was not always artistically satisfying – they were never offered the parts that went to Lana Turner, Rita Hayworth or Ava Gardner. But they paid for the rent and groceries, went to awesome parties, played small parts in movies with A-list stars (Tyrone Power, Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas), big parts in cheap "B" movies, and, for the most part, enjoyed themselves. Then they aged out and parts quit coming. They each found something else to do with their lives (Eddie found one clerking at an LA law firm, where most people had no idea she'd lured men to crime and bloody death onscreen). 

Last year I read Streisand's memoir. These six women represent the flip side of the coin. Not wealthy, revered superstars. But they created movie magic all the same and, like Babs, they're survivors. 

3. What will you read next? I don't know.