Myra-Breckinridge-Gore-Vidal

Randolph is interested only in himself. In fact, I have oftenthought that the analyst should pay the patient for allowinghimself to be used as a captive looking-glass. "I take it allback," I said curtly. "I didn't mean a word of it.""Consciously this may be true, but to have made theaccusation you did reveals..." I left him and crossed thestreet to where my car was parked, nearly getting myselfrun over by one of those maniac drivers who make walkingso perilous in the Greater Ls Angeles area. But then thepedestrian is not favored hereabouts. In fact, the police arequick to stop and question anyone found on foot in aresidential district since it is a part of California folklore thatonly the queer or criminal walk; the good drive cars that fillthe air with the foul odor of burning fossils, and so day byday our lungs fill up with the stuff of great ferns anddinosaurs who thus revenge themselves upon theirsuccessors, causing us to wither and die prematurely. As Iwatch the Las Vegas chorine turn and turn, I find myselfthinking, not unnaturally, of Turnabout (sic), with AdoipheMenjou, Carole Landis and adorable John Hubbard; and Iponder that brilliant plot in which husband and wifeexchange personalities through the magic of the talking film(he speaks with her voice, she with his) and, as ParkerTyler puts it so well, we have, as a result, "a realization ofancient magical belief in the guise of modern makebelieve,and the same ambiguity and ambivalence ofspiritual essences are revealed that modern psychology,especially psychoanalysis, has uncovered in present-daycivilization." My worn copy of Tyler's Magic and Myth of the