Recent reading:

Blink by Malcom Gladwell. This book has gotten a lot of press. From the author's website: "It's a book about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye." For me, the book was a padded-out magazine article. He talks about how our first impressions often get to the truth more directly than prolonged thinking. He also talks about how our first impressions often are biased due to our prejudices and assumptions. He makes no effort to explain the difference, which is pretty much the very next question any intelligent person would ask given these facts. He does say that we can train ourselves to recognize when our first impressions are based on information we gather so quickly that we are not able to explain why we react. But he doesn't say how, why, or when. He highlights people who have this skill, but treats them as if they were freaks of nature. Mostly, it's not a good book.

Monster: Living Off the Big Screen is a short book by John Gregory Dunne. It's about the process he and his wife, Joan Didion, went through as screenwriters for the movie, "Up Close and Personal", which started out to be about Jessica Savitch, a television reporter who died young and led a crazed life. The movie ended up being a star-based movie for Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer, having little to do with the original book. Dunne describes the long process a script goes through: the many changes in producers, directors, actors, executives, writers and agents. By the end of the book, I was surprised any movie gets made. Yet Dunne and Didion seem to enjoy this bizarre way of living. Dunne is as much a name-dropper as his brother Dominick Dunne, who makes his living these days simply by publishing his personal celebrity sluttery in Vanity Fair magazine. "Monster" has that familiar Dunne-like, "I know all these people who are far too classy to brag about knowing all these people." I first heard about this book many years ago when it was touted as one of the best books to read to understand how the film industry works. J.G. Dunne has another book called "The Studio" that is purported to be equally revealing.

Whenever I read this sort of thing I have to wonder how all those people would handle holding down a real job at the Ford plant or in a canning factory. Not very well, I presume. The thing is, Hollywood is full of real workers: the grunts who work construction, sound, catering -- all sorts of jobs that are relatively boring and require skills and dedication. Unlike people like me, the lives of their bosses get publicized all over the tabloids and the "news" broadcasts. I wonder how the rest of us could handle knowing just how silly and absurd the personal and professional activities of our own bosses are. Seriously, it's best not to know!