Decent men elude Mark Twain’s daughterDespite Clemens’s preferring one daughter over the others, all three sisters experienced the frequently tyrannical side of their father. Caroline Harnsberger, Clara’s biographer, has written that Clemens’s daughters were afraid …
How high can Bankers Hill go? A project to build a 20-story residential tower next to the St. Paul’s cathedral on Sixth Avenue between Maple and Nutmeg won praise and criticism from the community Thursday …
The Man who Turned Fact into Fiction One of the most famous bits of literary advice in the 20th Century was Sherwood Anderson’s suggestion that William Faulkner write not about aviators and New Orleans bohemians …
Roommates from Hell I walked outside to the storage door. I pushed on the door and opened it. I saw the rope around John’s neck and John’s face looking at me. I screamed and ran …
Raised Not to Hope Too Hard Sherley Anne Williams built her career celebrating the ways black folks talked and acted. School-wise, street-smart, and quick-tongued, she reserved her deepest antipathy for those outside the African-American experience …
Professor Horrdendo Discovers on Page 23 That I've Called an Orange a Tangerine “Then there were a couple of older gentlemen here in California, one an ophthalmologist in Santa Monica and the other a retired …
Never Die Like many newly married couples, Cristen and Jeffry Hays wanted to get pregnant soon after their wedding in 1992 but felt it best to wait. They used birth control until Jeffry finished three …
What Windansea surfers said about Tom Wolfe Eight summers have drifted by since Tom Wolfe (author of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test) traveled to California to write a series on “The New Life Out There” …
Gayborhood or ghetto? “I still love Jesus, and I’m still a conservative,” Texana R., 17, tells me. “I just am — I don’t care what my mama or my aunt or my step sister or …
Never Die They used birth control until Jeffry finished three years of chiropractic school, passed his preceptorship, and established a practice in San Diego. Then, in their mid-30s, with “it’s now or never” nagging them, …
The white mask On Saturday, September 6, 1958, Marilyn Monroe and the 175-person company of Some Like It Hot arrived at the Hotel del Coronado to begin location shots, after filming in Hollywood the previous …
d. July 6, 2002 It seems too crazy, like one of your mad, funny poems, that you’re not with us anymore, not here to point out the thisness of things, like mountains, circuses, and fresh …
for Clarissa My last love leapt into my life like a trapeze artist, flying across the air, arms outstretched, reaching toward me and I caught her, giving the crowd a scare. I took her quickly …
Where I live, no major high-volume road cuts apart the 'hood. People can cross the street without becoming dead. The amoeba-shaped Balboa Park Municipal Golf Course and grid-busting canyons have made a rabbit warren of the streets.
Bankers Hill. The name has a regal sound to it. Bankers Hill has been called "Pill Hill" for its many doctors' offices and "Gill Hill" for Irving Gill, who built the historic residences that grace …
I see Asian gang cars some nights, in a long caravan down the Mira Mesa Boulevard. They meet at In-N-Out Burger before heading off for illegal street races on Kearny Villa Road or in Sorrento Valley.
I’ve watched a great many changes take place in Hillcrest over the years. At this point in my life it’s a neighborhood of ghosts. I’ve been through a few relationships there, and each had certain …
It's been nearly a century since Freud asked his famous question about the nature of female desire, and very few men that I know are any closer to an answer than Freud was. In the …
I’m at a party in Point Loma celebrating the successful conclusion of a literary event that took a great deal of time and effort to put together. Everyone involved is letting go after months of …
There’s a reason why Italian cooking is one of the world’s great cuisines, and it doesn’t have much to do with four-star chefs, innovative cooking techniques, or secret ingredients. The reason can be summed up …
"There’s hardly anything you can think about that somebody hasn’t written a book on. They often come out of dissertation topics: books on The Diseases of Mites or The Mammalian Ear, from Cornell University Press, which we have."
"There were five canneries on Harbor Drive. I ended up on a fish boat for about seven years because they were paying pretty good money, but Larry never worked as a fisherman. He was too intellectual for that."
Read about author Lorenzo Madalena. Gino DeMarino nervously jerked his gray-visored fishing cap over his eyes, rubbed his hard palms over faded navy dungarees, and for the tenth time slapped the spokes of the wheel …
A few weeks ago, Tony Perry, a reporter for the L.A. Times who knows I love Walt Whitman's poetry, called me on the telephone. "What would Whitman make of the fact," he asked, "that Bill …
Rape of the Earth Medal of Dishonor The year's most infamous award goes to the voters of San Diego, a majority of whom agreed to exchange 39 acres of prime canyonland in Balboa Park for …
I would place major league baseball’s All-Star game about fifth or sixth on a ranked list of American sports classics, following the World Series, the football bowl games (including the pseudo-classic, overhyped Super Bowl), the …