From the Publisher

Leslie Epstein's new novel, set in Los Angeles in the 1950s and then, in a long final section, in 2000, depicts the Jacobis, the family of a famous film writer and director. Their story is told by Richard Jacobi, elder son, at the summit of his career as a painter. In five extended narratives, the novel traces the trajectory of Richard's self-awareness as he comes to terms with the death of his principled father and its lasting effects on his mother, brother, and himself. At the same time, the novel meditates on the status of Jews and African-Americans in the U.S. after World War II, and beautifully evokes the landscape of Southern California in its last days before the migration to it of millions.

Richard's reflections betray no nostalgia, but record forthrightly his feelings for a region and the people close to him. We see him on his living room floor watching, on a brand-new 1952 Zenith television, the broadcast of his father testifying before the House Committee on un-American Activities, at the beach in Malibu sizing up a French poseur in pursuit of his mother and her money, and on a trip with his brother and friends to a bar and brothel in Mexico. Through his sensitive discernment, the novel’s stories build until one moment crystallizes all that has come before.

In this novel, Leslie Epstein has revealed his past through the lens of his art. Like an American Proust, he shows how memory shapes the crucial events of a life.

The Los Angeles Times

Epstein's family can be discerned just beneath the surface of San Remo Drive, a haunting and ultimately heartbreaking account of what it was like to grow up in the movie colony of Southern California in the 1940s and '50s. — Jonathan Kirsch

The New York Times

… wonderfully resonant … a keenly observed portrait of Los Angeles in the late 1940's and 50's … a haunting and deeply affecting book. — Michiku Kakutani

Library Journal

Epstein (King of the Jews; Ice Fire Water) has previously drawn on his experience as the son of the great screenwriter and blacklist victim, Philip G. Epstein, but as the subtitle suggests, this is his most autobiographical novel to date. Protagonist Richard (Jacobi) Wilson is a painter rather than an author, but the "fictional" characters and incidents all feel thinly veiled. The novel consists of four linked stories taking place between 1948 and 1960 (when Richard's career is taking off) and a novella set in the year 2000, all exploring the arcs of several lives and the changing physical and social landscapes of America in general and Hollywood in particular. Questions of race, religion, art, interpersonal relationships, and personal integrity are posed but not resolved. The characters are similarly complex and fascinating, particularly Richard; his maddening muse, Madeleine; his manipulative mother, Lotte; and his "crazy" brother. This excitable, rebellious, charismatic, and blond adolescent is named Barty, so an otherwise highly realistic work brings constant reminders of another Hollywood icon, Bart Simpson. But don't have a cow, dude-buy this for all public and academic libraries.-Jim Dwyer, California State Univ. Lib., Chico Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Five interrelated tales of a leftist family in Hollywood during the McCarthy years and beyond, from longtime fiction writer Epstein (Ice Fire Water, 1999, etc.). Epstein's father was a well-known screenwriter (he wrote the Casablanca script), and his portrait of Hollywood has an insider's perspective. Narrator is Richard Jacobi, an aspiring painter whose father is a successful screenwriter and producer, and the stories follow an uneven timeline from the late 1940s to the near present. In "Malibu," Richard, his brother Barton, and his recently widowed mother Lotte visit the beach house of Lotte's dreadful French lover Rene, who tries to ingratiate himself with the boys. "Desert" moves back to describe the events following the appearance of Norman, Richard's father, before HUAC-an episode that results in Norman's blacklisting and may even bring on his death. The Jacobis are odd: Norman is a classic 1930s lefty; son Barton a Jewish anti-Semite who becomes increasingly deranged; Lotte a kind of southern belle lost in a harsh world of politics, art, and money; and Richard a sensitive artistic prig. Their fall is inevitable after Norman's death, and eventually even the mansion on San Remo Drive must be sold, but in the title story Richard returns as a successful painter to buy it back and move in with his wife and two sons. There, surrounded by his dying mother, crazy brother, jealous wife, and the girl who was his first love and inspiration for his art, he discovers a new series of trauma and heartache. But the circle remains unbroken, and Richard concludes "that all art is created . . . from the images of our childhood, with its early sorrows and many joys, that we carry undamaged within." Amodest work, but not slight. With a light touch, Epstein evokes the fear and exhilaration of youth-and the comforts and regrets of middle age.

Product Details

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San Remo Drive

Handsel Books

Chapter One

"It's going to be a nice day," she declared; as if in obeisance one corner of the milky overcast peeled away. At once the windows of the houses atop the right-hand hilltops began to shine, winking down on the sudden checkerboard of the sea.

"No, it is not," said Bartie.

I glanced back in the mirror: his face was buried in dog fur, the wind socks of the animal's ears twirling just above his own. He wasn't, I knew, referring to the climate.

"Why are you being so negative?" Lotte replied, though I doubted Bartie could hear her in the rush of air. "René is looking forward to the afternoon and so am I and you should be too. He is a wonderful cook. He is going to a lot of trouble to make a special treat. And his house is a little dream."

"A little dream on stilts," I muttered.

"Well, of course it's on stilts, Richard. It's a beach house. I hope you're not going to be in a negative mood too. Let's relax. Everybody just relax. We're going to have a good time."

I pulled around a Bekins van and was able to speed up after Carson Canyon. Lotte twisted her pale green scarf under her chin, and in that clamp fell speechless.

Bartie, in back, said, "It's too soon." Which might, from him, have meant anything: Slow down, we're getting there too soon; Too soon for the three of us to start fighting; or, and here's where I put my money, Too soon to have a good time.

I took a quick look over my shoulder. Barton stared back at me, grinning, a little gap-toothed, a little bucktoothed, which is what he got for sucking his thumb. "They don't have a King of England anymore. Everyone there wears black clothes. I saw it on the Zenith. They are sad because there isn't a king."

Lotte: "Yes, they have been very sad. But now they are going to have a queen, Bartie. The Princess Elizabeth. You can watch her coronation next month on television. No one will be wearing black, I promise you that. Isn't that how things should be? The king is dead. Long live the queen."

"But they waited a year. More than a year. That was February. Next month is June."

Our mother didn't answer. In Barton's mind, she knew, our father was the king-king of Hollywood, king of comedy-and it was a scandal not to mourn him for at least as long as the English had George VI. Instead, she pointed through the windshield. "There it is. Slow down, Richard. We'll go by."

The row of beachfront properties fell away on the left, caught between the highway and the public beaches. I coasted past the Sweet-water turnoff, trying to distinguish one of the sagging shacks from the other. None looked as if it had been painted since before the war: faded pastels, cheek by jowl, like a tray of melting sherbert.

"It's that one!" said Lotte. "See? That's his car."

She meant, I saw, a blue Plymouth coupe parked in front of what looked to be little more than a cabin of créme de menthe. I swung in behind it and turned off the ignition. A dog was barking nearby. A piece of tar paper on the place next door was slapping against the rooftop. And of course there was the thump of the waves on the hidden beach below. I opened my door at the same time René stepped out of the little house and made for us.

"Ah, Lotte, I have been waiting. You are late, just like today the sun. Welcome! Hello, boys! Comment allez-vous? All is well?"

He had, as always, his thin Frenchman's moustache and his thin Frenchman's hair, slicked down with the brilliantine we all could smell when he leaned over the passenger door and gave our mother a Frenchman's double kiss.

"We got a late start, darling," Lotte began, though René had already moved to the rear, where with what I knew was called bonhomie he was kneading Bartie's neck.

"And how is this one, eh? My sailor! My marine!"

Barton's lashes dropped over his eyes, which when open were a startling blue. He smiled. "We brought Sammy," he said.

"I see! Bonjour, monsieur," he said to the dog, patting him once on the head, so that his eyes closed reflexively too. "What a fierce beast. That is why I have put Achille on the rope. You hear him? Barton, what is he saying?"

"I want that spaniel for lunch-" That was my contribution, which I covered with a chuckle.

René laughed aloud, with his head back, so that his short-sleeved shirt, circles of yellow, circles of blue, split over his belly. "Ha! Ha! But no! Ha! Ha! Lotte? You heard? Pour le déjeuner!"

"He didn't ask you," said Barton. A button of flesh, a red-colored welt, rose on his brow. "Why did you answer?"

Lotte slid off the bench cushion to the gravel of the drive. "And you wouldn't believe the traffic. At least, I can't believe it. Norman and I moved out here in 1935. Practically with the covered wagons! There was hardly a car on the road back then. Honestly, you blink once and the population doubles. We were the pioneers."

I got out the driver's door and turned toward where our mother's lover-I hadn't much evidence for that, aside from his diplomatist's kisses and a single embrace that I had spied through the windblown curtains of our living room window-now approached me, his pink hand out. The lids of my own eyes dropped at his touch, so that I found myself staring at the wrinkle-free material of what people were beginning to call Bermuda shorts; his bowed, tanned legs; and the oddly pale and oddly small feet, crisscrossed by the leather straps of his sandals. "Richard," he said, "I feel embarrassment because I am going to show you my latest paintings. I mean, I cannot hide them, eh? They are not in your style. They are more-what do you call it, chérie? More of l'expressionisme."

My mother had leaned back over her side of the Buick, to fish out her beach bag, which was woven from the same washed-out colors, in straw, as the dwellings along the shore. "Darling, why do you apologize? There's certainly no reason for that. Your work is expressive. Did I tell you that Betty is considering the new oils for her gallery? She has the best taste of all my friends."

"What do you mean, pioneers? You and Daddy came out on the Super Chief! With an observation deck, for Christ's sake, Mom. Do you know what the real pioneers, the ones who did have covered wagons, went through?"

"Well, I wasn't suggesting that we were cannibals."

"Why do you have to put yourself-I don't know, at the head of the line."

"Richard-" This was René. "You must not speak with this disrespect toward your mother. I implore you."

"Disrespect? I am just trying to make a point. Have you read Grapes of Wrath? It's a great book. A John Steinbeck novel. The Okies, the people from Oklahoma-do you even know what that is?"

"It is a province of the country. I know that of course."

"A province! Ha! Ha! Ha! Did you hear that, Bartie? I bet he couldn't be a citizen, even if he wanted to. No French guy is going to know who signed the Declaration of Independence."

"Richard, you are always so smart. Do you know that we wouldn't even have our independence if it weren't for the help of France? Lafayette, we are here!"

Lotte beamed at René across the cooling hood of the automobile. Then her smile disappeared. "Oh, no, Barton," she cried. "Not now! Please don't!"

Bartie had donned a pair of dark glasses, wire-rimmed, and now he put a cold corncob pipe in his mouth. "I shall return," he intoned, in a voice deeper than his own.

"Ha, ha! This boy: he makes for us a masquerade?"

"I'm so upset. Oh, René. I don't know what to do. He's had that pipe for a year. And he has a cap too! Barton! Please! He keeps pretending he's that terrible MacArthur."

As if on cue my brother took out a visored cap and placed it over the mop of blond curls that, with his blue eyes, reinforced the romance that he was not from our dark-haired, dark-skinned family, nor from any other line of Jews. He got to his feet and through some kind of trickery-jutting the jaw, sucking in his plump, pink cheeks until they sank in like the septuagenarian's-transformed himself into the great man, the darling of the Republicans, as he drove down Fifth Avenue.

"Old soldiers," he declared, around the pipe-stem, "never die-" Then he threw out his arms, as if to catch the streams of ticker tape, the snowstorm of the confetti, the roaring crowds that were simulated by the cymbal crash of the oncoming sea. But in that instant the dog's leash slipped though his boy's-sized hand; Sam flashed over the side of the Buick and disappeared yipping and yapping down the side of the bluff that separated René's green house from the plum-colored bungalow next door. A howl went up: the beast on the rope!

"Sammy!" cried Bartie.

Lotte: "Stop him! René!"

"I'll get him," I shouted; but I knew, from the torrent of animal growls, the two different pitches of the barks and bays, that I was too late.

René's cabin was indeed supported on stilts, four long iron poles sunk into the sand. Achille, a big German shepherd, black and brown, was tied to one of them. He lunged, gasping from the pressure of his collar, at our little spaniel. Each time he did so, the rope caught him, standing him upright, so that the saliva flew from his mouth. Again and again Sammy, his fur standing on his back, dashed forward, teasing and taunting. The din, in that cavern, was tremendous.

"It's a Nazi dog! A Nazi dog!" Barton was screaming the words. He scooped handfuls of sand and threw them at the crazed Alsatian. The breeze blew them back in his face.

"Richard! Richard!" cried Lotte, from atop the bluff. "Can't you do something? Catch him!"

I tried, hurling myself full-length at the darting dog. But Sammy dodged easily and came at his antagonist from a different angle. Achille turned, rearing, only to have the spaniel run beneath him, nipping at his hocks. After a series of feints I saw, or thought I saw, a method in this madness. Sam kept moving to his left, which meant that each new stand that Achille took tended to wind him clockwise around his iron pillar. It took less than a minute for his tether to be cut by half. His breath was shorter too, coming out in human-like groans. The fierce barking had stopped.

"Don't cry, Bartie," I shouted, glancing back at my brother, whose face was covered by a mask of sand crystals and zigzagging tears. "He's going to win!"

It seemed, for an instant, to be true. The big brute was strangling himself. He breathed now with the hacking, wheezing cough of a smoker.

Barton saw this. He thumped his chest with his balled-up hands. "It's David," he cried. "David and Goliath!"

But this time the giant was the clever one. Sammy came in at five o'clock, like a Spitfire attacking a lumbering German Junker. Achille didn't leap; instead he remained in a crouch close to the ground, and Sammy in amazement tumbled to a halt before the snot-smeared snout. In an instant the Alsatian shot forward and took the spaniel in his open jaws.

Lotte screamed. Bartie cried, "No-o-o-o!" For a heartbeat I thought that Achille, like a python, would swallow him whole.

Then René strode forward. "Assez! La ferme!" Without breaking stride he kicked his dog in the belly, not with the leather toe of his sandal but with the much harder bone of his shin. The shepherd buckled, spitting out his prey, who dragged himself off, whimpering, whining. "Cochon!" cried the Frenchman. He kicked the animal again, this time against the heaving rib cage.

Bartie ran toward his own dog, who stood slick and shaking, like a miniature of a newborn foal. He took him in his arms.

"Don't kick him anymore," I said, fighting tears myself. "Please."

"What? You ask me to spare him? This pig of an animal? It will be as you wish. We will show mercy."

Lotte came down the bluff, stumbling a little. "Is everyone all right? Is anyone bitten?"

"Wasn't Sammy great, Mom?" said Barton. "He's a brave boy!"

"What is this?" asked René, pointing to his nose.

"A nose," I answered.

"Le nez. Oui. And it smells something. Wait. A moment. Ah, it is the crust of the saucisson. Come. Up the stairs, my friends. Our luncheon is burning."

The Frenchman led the way up the wooden planks that served as the back staircase. Bartie followed, holding Sam against his chest. I moved to the first of the unpainted steps. Lotte touched my arm.

"I didn't mean anything," she said. "You and Bartie, you're the real Angelenos. The natives of the land." Then she leaned closer, though her lover, I realized, was still close enough to hear. "You mustn't worry. You know I'd never do anything you didn't approve."

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from San Remo Drive by Leslie Epstein Copyright © 2003 by Leslie Epstein
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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