Book Review: The Castle on Sunset
The Castle on Sunset — Saturday January 21, 2023
The Castle on Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood's Chateau Marmont was a wonderful book that represents in a sense the microcosm of Hollywood history as compared to the rest of Hollywood. There are many incidents and figures in Hollywood such as some of my favorites including Wallace Shawn and Johnny Depp and Hunter S Thompson who ended up at the Château Marmont.
Regarding my overall reading habits, I think this represents my somewhat eternal interest in the history of the city of Los Angeles. I think this is represented because my father went there for high school and my mom got her master’s and PhD in anthropology from the University of California Los Angeles UCLA. I’ve also visited Los Angeles several times in my life and my parents actually moved there in 1992 and lived a few blocks on Bundy Drive in Brentwood near O.J. Simpson where he committed or allegedly committed the notorious murder that he ended up writing a book about how he would’ve done it have you done it. And my parents also experienced other issues including the earthquake that occurred in 1992 as well. So they decided not to end up living there but it is interesting that I could’ve been a major part of my life had things gone differently. But it is interesting because my father ended up working at Cadwalader Wickersham Taft which is the oldest law firm in the United States when they opened up a branch in Los Angeles and we still have quite a few books that I recall from Los Angeles in 1992 regarding lawyers and directories and other such types of interesting law books such as the directories of California lawyers from January 1992. I think there is even a photograph that the law firm Cadwalader Wickersham Taft had sent over to my parents some champagne and flowers for her congratulations on the new job.
One of my favorite movies growing up not necessarily because it was fun in the same way that Disney movie can be fun, but was Sunset Boulevard 1950 by the reason because my father ended up showing it to me as a kid and then I ended up watching it again I think in fourth or fifth grade or maybe in the summer between fourth and fifth grade. And I remember having a resurgence in interest in it when I was 17 years old in Los Angeles right before I headed up to college at St. John’s College in Annapolis Maryland because a few weeks before college started I ended up taking a trip out west.
Anyway, Sunset Boulevard (1950) had always been on my mind and it was something that I thought about from time to time in college and I ended up re-watching it recently after I saw Mulholland Drive about a year or two ago and Mulholland Drive by David Lynch has become my favorite movie. And I remember reading a book by David Foster Wallace while he was on set for Lost Highway the movie by David Lynch where David Foster Wallace heard on so that someone said the movie is about the book City of Quartz. And because of that I ended up reading that book. And as it turns out it was one of the best history books I’ve read in a really long time. It is a fascinating account of the last hundred years of Los Angeles starting in the early 1900s discussing the perfect ideal socialist state that Upton Sinclair was trying to create in the 1920s and his failed mayoral bid in the early 1900s. It’s interesting to consider what socialist utopias might’ve occurred. But it’s interesting also to note the direct link between David Foster Wallace, and David Lynch, my interest in the city of Los Angeles, and ultimately coming to this book itself and reading this. It’s interesting to see the narrative and the strings that connect everything together.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and as it turns out this book was published in 2019 but from what I understand reading online the château Marmont is no longer open for public use and only members can go in there and use the hotel.
© Charles Edward Andrew Lincoln IV
