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    Zeroville: A Novel
    Zeroville: A Novel
    Zeroville: A Novel
    Ebook606 pages5 hours

    Zeroville: A Novel

    By Steve Erickson

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The novel that inspired the film starring James Franco and Seth Rogen: “One of a kind . . . a funny, unnervingly surreal page turner” (Newsweek).
     
    Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post Book World, Newsweek, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review
     
    Zeroville centers on the story of Vikar, a young architecture student so enthralled with the movies that his friends call him “cinéautistic.” With an intensely religious childhood behind him, and tattoos of Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift on his head, he arrives in Hollywood—where he’s mistaken for a member of the Manson family and eventually scores a job as a film editor. Vikar discovers the frames of a secret film within the reels of every movie ever made, and sets about splicing them together—a task that takes on frightening theological dimensions. Electrifying and “darkly funny,” Zeroville dives into the renegade American cinema of the 1970s and ’80s and emerges into an era for which we have no name (Publishers Weekly).
     
    “Funny, disturbing, daring . . . dreamlike and sometimes nightmarish.” —The New York Times Book Review
     
    “Magnificent.” —The Believer
     
    “[A] writer who has been compared to Vladimir Nabokov, Don DeLillo, and Thomas Pynchon.” —Bookmarks Magazine
     
    “Erickson is as unique and vital and pure a voice as American fiction has produced.” —Jonathan Lethem

    Editor's Note

    Cinema & the ’70s…

    A dark, dreamy book about films and obsession in Los Angeles, this impressive novel by one of today’s truly unique literary voices is far from your typical Hollywood story.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateApr 30, 2013
    ISBN9781480409996
    Zeroville: A Novel
    Author

    Steve Erickson

    Steve Erickson is the acclaimed author of several novels, including Arc d’X, Rubicon Beach, and Days Between Stations. Regarded as a central figure in the avant-pop movement, Erickson has been compared to J. G. Ballard and Don DeLillo, and praised by Thomas Pynchon, for his deeply imaginative fiction. In addition to his novels, he has published two works of nonfiction about American politics and culture and has written for the New York Times Magazine, Esquire, and Rolling Stone. The recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, he is presently the film critic for Los Angeles magazine and editor of the literary journal Black Clock. 

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    Reviews for Zeroville

    4/5

    137 ratings10 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Loved this book, it was perfect until the ending, which seemed like a mix between a bad comic book story and a metal music video, the ritualistic murder that flutters through Vicar's mind, through his dreams, the film that plays in his head and is hidden in the reels of the world's cinematic history. Look, the payoff was not bad, but it was handled in the clumsy way that Erickson always ties together his novels.

      Here is his pattern: string you along with a narrative, some very ominous and portentous character appears (and you know they'll swing back into the story in some cosmic way), a strange coincidence wherein you realized that all these plots are related in some trippy way, then there's usually an abrupt time shift (usually relating to that cosmic character, the trippy 'conduit'---here it's the child), then the story abruptly shifts back to the primary narrative (or perhaps another new one?) and by the end all the pieces fit together in some metaphorical way, usually with some mysteries cue (here the film reels, in Arc D'x the notion of darkness, in These Dreams of You the word America).

      This is not bad, and in fact, I like the formula. But it gets a bit tiring after a while when everything in the story is cosmically related in this almost tries-too-hard trippy way.

      Yes, a very flawed novel, especially the ending, which seems to try very hard to shock or amaze us when something more demure would have better suited this hallucinatory, ethereal novel. The ending was what made me think it was not a masterpiece, when everything up until the last 30 pages pure brilliance.


      But still, the more time I leave between me and this book, the more I can forgive the ending and realize that the entire thing has the necessary vividness and power of recall that is usually reserved for truly great literature.

      Think of it this way, in terms Erickson would understand: it's a nearly perfect album with the one bad song, and it falls right at the end.

      4.5/5
    • 5/5
      Unlike anything I've ever read, and I've been reading for 60 years. Like the times it was set in, psychedelic and in style surreal. I read very intermittently online so at times I lost the thread. Aside from that, it was a wonderful reading experience.
    • 5/5
      The trek of a reading adult is often a lonely and opaque one, only in the sense, that the course is personal and peers can only shrug and smile, but the path continues. I can say that if I could ever pen a piece of literary achievement, it would be Zeroville.
    • 4/5
      Even though I didn't give Zeroville 5 stars because of its imperfections, it remains one of the most intriguing novels I read in 2008 (note: there are spoilers in the following review). I read the novel straight through over two days, a compulsion that I both enjoyed and resented. This is how I used to read when I was young and how I resist reading now that I’m older. I no longer want to be grabbed by the collar so to speak. In this case, however, I didn’t feel particularly manipulated by the novel, just disoriented and a bit weirded out from the immersion in Vikar Jerome’s cinematic (“cinéautistic”) obsessions. The novel is a continual loop of cinematic cuts, each numbered scene a “take” or a “frame.” I wonder why the novel proceeds to number 227 and then reverses itself. Perhaps I’m missing a numeric reference or symbol. Two films appear over and over again: George Steven’s A Place in the Sun starring Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift and Carl Dreyer’s silent film, The Passion of Joan of Arc. I haven’t seen either. I do remember my own enthrallment with Taylor after viewing National Velvet when I was young and then, a bit later, Giant. Vikar believes he has discovered a truth about movies (and life) in noting that there is a left profile and a right profile (shadow side, light side; good, evil, etc.) and that movies are timeless, a loop, both recapitulating their futures and predicting their pasts. Cut and paste. Splice. That Vikar moves from set design to editing is emblematic. For only a film editor could insert (and, by the same token, excise)the subliminal frame(the Biblical rock slab where Abraham would have willingly sacrificed his son to prove his faith until his hand is stayed by God)that Vikar discovers in all 500 plus films in his archive. Vikar as editor reassembles these films into a sequence of stills, of closer and closer-up shots, at the end of the novel. The end of the novel is the weakest part of the work, however. I don’t quite understand the necessity of Vikar’s death, although I imagine it has something to do with sacrificing the father (he is acting father to Zazi) instead of sacrificing the child for once (it is implied that the body on the rock slab with the Hebrew writing, once it becomes identifiable by Vikar’s alignment of close-up frames, is that of Zazi, the daughter, interestingly enough, rather than the son); in other words, reversing the tide of monotheistic, patriarchal history and myth. He remembers his father sitting on the edge of his bed holding a knife just as Abraham raised his knife (or sword or dagger) to kill his son Isaac (viz Ike Jerome). Vikar excises the hidden frames in the films in order to excise the sacrifice of the child from the dream—releasing the child from his/her cinematic nightmares.
      At the point in the novel where Zazi’s mother, Soledad Paladin, dies in a quasi-suicidal accident, after which Zazi moves in with Vikar, who has always been concerned about Zazi’s welfare and who has promised her mother to take care of her if anything happens, I am prepared to be disappointed if the novel sexualizes the relationship between Zazi and Vikar. Thankfully, this doesn’t happen. Indeed Vikar remains an innocent and calls himself a virgin at age 37 since the only sexual act he has engaged in is fellatio (oral sex received but not returned as far as I can tell. He has never gone “all the way” although it is not entirely clear why he “can’t” or why his not being able to is necessary to the novel. Perhaps it is that he can’t or refuses to procreate, since he sees the Father as the child murderer and refuses to be one. He thus must maintain his status as an innocent. On the other hand, he can be a godfather to Zazi who, despite her old-beyond-her-years (at 12 or 14 or 17) perspective and lifestyle is also a virgin. He replaces the father-son dyad with a father-daughter dyad. This is a strategy without exit, however, since if to stop the child-sacrifice central to patriarchy it is necessary to remain virginal, then that’s it for the human race. Vikar (like his two-profiles thesis) is both innocent and violent. He is the ultimate body-slamming punk music wild man and also the quintessential romantic, one who might exist in a movie but not ever in real life.
    • 4/5
      Zeroville is easy to love: the historical viewing experiences of the main cineauture/character echo my own by only a few years (plus his appreciation of Iggy Pop and the band X). I have enjoyed a number of Erickson's previous novels and enjoyed his sense of existential panic, but have never seen him as focused on a particular existential drama nor as locked into the tradition of the Hollywood novel (as practiced by the criminally ignored Gavin Lambert, Nathaniel West, Raymond Chandler, et al), but have been waiting for him to reach a level of artistic mastery. This very well could be his launch point.

      For me: excellent subject matter, good observations, and a ridiculously unrealistic setting. If you create and play in myths, you must either overwhelm the reader with your power, or hew closer to some semblance of reality.
    • 5/5
      Zeroville by Steve Erickson is a cult novel. You can tell it's a cult novel because it's full of very hip cultural references and it's hero is a disaffected wanderer with tendencies towards violence. I like cult novels and I liked Zeroville.Vikar Jerome, the novels hero, sort of strays into Hollywood without much of a past and without much of a plan for the future. What he does have is a head full of cinematic knowledge; so much so that it is actually visable. He has a tattoo of Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor in a scene from A Place in the Sun on the side of his head. Vikar reminded me very much of Hazel Motes from Wise Blood, probably because I just read it, and of Ignatius J. Riley from A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. I think if you crossed the two of them and threw the product into The Day of the Locust you'd be pretty close to understanding Zeroville.I fear that, so far, this probably sounds like I didn't like the book, but I'm just not sure quite what to make of it yet. One of the characters talks about seeing a movie six times and saying "God, I hate this movie," every time, then seeing it a seventh time and saying "God, I love this movie." I think that may be a common experience with readers of Zeroville. After Vikar wanders into Hollywood, he sort of wanders into a series of jobs in the movies culminating with a chance to direct his own film. Along the way he meets various people and befriends them through no real effort on his own part. All he really wants to do is watch movies, and watch movies he does. Erickson spends a lot of time summarizing the movies Vikar sees; sometimes he names them and sometimes we have to guess what the movie is. He does the same things with the people Vikar meets, naming a few celebrities and letting us figure out who the rest of them are. Far from becoming annoying, this is actually fun. In fact, I plan to thumb through the book and add most Vikar's movie lists to my Netflix queue. Throughout the novel Vikar is haunted by a recurring dream and by the idea that all movies contain a secret movie that wants to be released. How readers react to the way this idea plays out will probaby determine whether or not they end up liking the book enough to seek out Mr. Erickson's other work. I'm not really sure what I think of it, but I'll be thinking about it for a while; I'll also be looking into other books by Steve Erickson.I'm giving Zeroville by Steve Erickson five out of five stars.
    • 4/5
      I liked it, but it was a probably a bit over my head. I would recommend it, and I loved all of the references, but yeah, I'm not quite sure what happened.
    • 5/5
      I read this book in one sitting. If you love any of the following things--old movies, Hollywood, the 1960s, Montgomery Clift, naive main characters, freaking weird main characters, books that are profound because they are difficult to understand, books that seem to make sense after mulling them over for a month, books that stick with you long after you read them--read Zeroville by Steve Erickson. I am not familiar with his other work, but if this book is any indication, he is one of the most criminally ignored writers in America.
    • 4/5
      Much less obscure than some of his earlier works, but somehow I miss the dense atmospherics. I read it yesterday in a single go while waiting at an airport and the imagery has stuck with me, demanding to be deciphered. I think I'll be at it for a while. Like reading Delillo, it subversively takes up residence in your head.
    • 4/5
      There are several things I want to say about Steve Erickson's Zeroville, but none of them really describe what's going on here. The first would be that you really need to love and know vintage movies to get this, but that's not entirely true. Yes, it would add to the experience to know the difference between Rio Bravo and Red River, and to understand what Vikar means when he says that Travis Bickle is in another movie where he's a boxer. But that's also completely unnecessary to get into the quest--and that's what this story is, a quest--that Vikar undertakes. The second is that this story, with its piles upon piles of coincidence, wonder and desperation reminds me, more than any other book, of House of Leaves. I think Vikar and Johnny have a lot in common, but Vikar's quest is absent the unnamed menace of Johnny's.Vikar knows movies. In fact, that's all he knows. He finds his feelings in them, but learns how to communicate with others not through what is said during movies but rather what the people around him say about the movies. That's the thing about Erickson's writing that makes this book so hard to pin down: it's not a book about the movies, it's a book about how we feel about the movies. And in a way, it's a book about how the movies feel about us. Vikar gives his whole life to unspooling a cosmic reel of questions--saying that makes the book sound lofty and sanctimonious, but Erickson brings it down to earth with the grit of Vikar's obsessions, appetites and fears.Like House of Leaves, I'm still not entirely sure that what I have written about Zeroville is even accurate. But to its credit the book was fun to read, even through its ruminations on God and sacrifice, so that I am ready to revisit this, and soon.

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    Zeroville

    A Novel

    Steve Erickson

    Contents

    Chapter 1

    Chapter 2

    Chapter 3

    Chapter 4

    Chapter 5

    Chapter 6

    Chapter 7

    Chapter 8

    Chapter 9

    Chapter 10

    Chapter 11

    Chapter 12

    Chapter 13

    Chapter 14

    Chapter 15

    Chapter 16

    Chapter 17

    Chapter 18

    Chapter 19

    Chapter 20

    Chapter 21

    Chapter 22

    Chapter 23

    Chapter 24

    Chapter 25

    Chapter 26

    Chapter 27

    Chapter 28

    Chapter 29

    Chapter 30

    Chapter 31

    Chapter 32

    Chapter 33

    Chapter 34

    Chapter 35

    Chapter 36

    Chapter 37

    Chapter 38

    Chapter 39

    Chapter 40

    Chapter 41

    Chapter 42

    Chapter 43

    Chapter 44

    Chapter 45

    Chapter 46

    Chapter 47

    Chapter 48

    Chapter 49

    Chapter 50

    Chapter 51

    Chapter 52

    Chapter 53

    Chapter 54

    Chapter 55

    Chapter 56

    Chapter 57

    Chapter 58

    Chapter 59

    Chapter 60

    Chapter 61

    Chapter 62

    Chapter 63

    Chapter 64

    Chapter 65

    Chapter 66

    Chapter 67

    Chapter 68

    Chapter 69

    Chapter 70

    Chapter 71

    Chapter 72

    Chapter 73

    Chapter 74

    Chapter 75

    Chapter 76

    Chapter 77

    Chapter 78

    Chapter 79

    Chapter 80

    Chapter 81

    Chapter 82

    Chapter 83

    Chapter 84

    Chapter 85

    Chapter 86

    Chapter 87

    Chapter 88

    Chapter 89

    Chapter 90

    Chapter 91

    Chapter 92

    Chapter 93

    Chapter 94

    Chapter 95

    Chapter 96

    Chapter 97

    Chapter 98

    Chapter 99

    Chapter 100

    Chapter 101

    Chapter 102

    Chapter 103

    Chapter 104

    Chapter 105

    Chapter 106

    Chapter 107

    Chapter 108

    Chapter 109

    Chapter 110

    Chapter 111

    Chapter 112

    Chapter 113

    Chapter 114

    Chapter 115

    Chapter 116

    Chapter 117

    Chapter 118

    Chapter 119

    Chapter 120

    Chapter 121

    Chapter 122

    Chapter 123

    Chapter 124

    Chapter 125

    Chapter 126

    Chapter 127

    Chapter 128

    Chapter 129

    Chapter 130

    Chapter 131

    Chapter 132

    Chapter 133

    Chapter 134

    Chapter 135

    Chapter 136

    Chapter 137

    Chapter 138

    Chapter 139

    Chapter 140

    Chapter 141

    Chapter 142

    Chapter 143

    Chapter 144

    Chapter 145

    Chapter 146

    Chapter 147

    Chapter 148

    Chapter 149

    Chapter 150

    Chapter 151

    Chapter 152

    Chapter 153

    Chapter 154

    Chapter 155

    Chapter 156

    Chapter 157

    Chapter 158

    Chapter 159

    Chapter 160

    Chapter 161

    Chapter 162

    Chapter 163

    Chapter 164

    Chapter 165

    Chapter 166

    Chapter 167

    Chapter 168

    Chapter 169

    Chapter 170

    Chapter 171

    Chapter 172

    Chapter 173

    Chapter 174

    Chapter 175

    Chapter 176

    Chapter 177

    Chapter 178

    Chapter 179

    Chapter 180

    Chapter 181

    Chapter 182

    Chapter 183

    Chapter 184

    Chapter 185

    Chapter 186

    Chapter 187

    Chapter 188

    Chapter 189

    Chapter 190

    Chapter 191

    Chapter 192

    Chapter 193

    Chapter 194

    Chapter 195

    Chapter 196

    Chapter 197

    Chapter 198

    Chapter 199

    Chapter 200

    Chapter 201

    Chapter 202

    Chapter 203

    Chapter 204

    Chapter 205

    Chapter 206

    Chapter 207

    Chapter 208

    Chapter 209

    Chapter 210

    Chapter 211

    Chapter 212

    Chapter 213

    Chapter 214

    Chapter 215

    Chapter 216

    Chapter 217

    Chapter 218

    Chapter 219

    Chapter 220

    Chapter 221

    Chapter 222

    Chapter 223

    Chapter 224

    Chapter 225

    Chapter 226

    Chapter 227

    Chapter 226

    Chapter 225

    Chapter 224

    Chapter 223

    Chapter 222

    Chapter 221

    Chapter 220

    Chapter 219

    Chapter 218

    Chapter 217

    Chapter 216

    Chapter 215

    Chapter 214

    Chapter 213

    Chapter 212

    Chapter 211

    Chapter 210

    Chapter 209

    Chapter 208

    Chapter 207

    Chapter 206

    Chapter 205

    Chapter 204

    Chapter 203

    Chapter 202

    Chapter 201

    Chapter 200

    Chapter 199

    Chapter 198

    Chapter 197

    Chapter 196

    Chapter 195

    Chapter 194

    Chapter 193

    Chapter 192

    Chapter 191

    Chapter 190

    Chapter 189

    Chapter 188

    Chapter 187

    Chapter 186

    Chapter 185

    Chapter 184

    Chapter 183

    Chapter 182

    Chapter 181

    Chapter 180

    Chapter 179

    Chapter 178

    Chapter 177

    Chapter 176

    Chapter 175

    Chapter 174

    Chapter 173

    Chapter 172

    Chapter 171

    Chapter 170

    Chapter 169

    Chapter 168

    Chapter 167

    Chapter 166

    Chapter 165

    Chapter 164

    Chapter 163

    Chapter 162

    Chapter 161

    Chapter 160

    Chapter 159

    Chapter 158

    Chapter 157

    Chapter 156

    Chapter 155

    Chapter 154

    Chapter 153

    Chapter 152

    Chapter 151

    Chapter 150

    Chapter 149

    Chapter 148

    Chapter 147

    Chapter 146

    Chapter 145

    Chapter 144

    Chapter 143

    Chapter 142

    Chapter 141

    Chapter 140

    Chapter 139

    Chapter 138

    Chapter 137

    Chapter 136

    Chapter 135

    Chapter 134

    Chapter 133

    Chapter 132

    Chapter 131

    Chapter 130

    Chapter 129

    Chapter 128

    Chapter 127

    Chapter 126

    Chapter 125

    Chapter 124

    Chapter 123

    Chapter 122

    Chapter 121

    Chapter 120

    Chapter 119

    Chapter 118

    Chapter 117

    Chapter 116

    Chapter 115

    Chapter 114

    Chapter 113

    Chapter 112

    Chapter 111

    Chapter 110

    Chapter 109

    Chapter 108

    Chapter 107

    Chapter 106

    Chapter 105

    Chapter 104

    Chapter 103

    Chapter 102

    Chapter 101

    Chapter 100

    Chapter 99

    Chapter 98

    Chapter 97

    Chapter 96

    Chapter 95

    Chapter 94

    Chapter 93

    Chapter 92

    Chapter 91

    Chapter 90

    Chapter 89

    Chapter 88

    Chapter 87

    Chapter 86

    Chapter 85

    Chapter 84

    Chapter 83

    Chapter 82

    Chapter 81

    Chapter 80

    Chapter 79

    Chapter 78

    Chapter 77

    Chapter 76

    Chapter 75

    Chapter 74

    Chapter 73

    Chapter 72

    Chapter 71

    Chapter 70

    Chapter 69

    Chapter 68

    Chapter 67

    Chapter 66

    Chapter 65

    Chapter 64

    Chapter 63

    Chapter 62

    Chapter 61

    Chapter 60

    Chapter 59

    Chapter 58

    Chapter 57

    Chapter 56

    Chapter 55

    Chapter 54

    Chapter 53

    Chapter 52

    Chapter 51

    Chapter 50

    Chapter 49

    Chapter 48

    Chapter 47

    Chapter 46

    Chapter 45

    Chapter 44

    Chapter 43

    Chapter 42

    Chapter 41

    Chapter 40

    Chapter 39

    Chapter 38

    Chapter 37

    Chapter 36

    Chapter 35

    Chapter 34

    Chapter 33

    Chapter 32

    Chapter 31

    Chapter 30

    Chapter 29

    Chapter 28

    Chapter 27

    Chapter 26

    Chapter 25

    Chapter 24

    Chapter 23

    Chapter 22

    Chapter 21

    Chapter 20

    Chapter 19

    Chapter 18

    Chapter 17

    Chapter 16

    Chapter 15

    Chapter 14

    Chapter 13

    Chapter 12

    Chapter 11

    Chapter 10

    Chapter 9

    Chapter 8

    Chapter 7

    Chapter 6

    Chapter 5

    Chapter 4

    Chapter 3

    Chapter 2

    Chapter 1

    Chapter 0

    Acknowledgments

    I believe that cinema was here

    from the beginning of the world.

    JOSEF VON STERNBERG

    1.

    On Vikar’s shaved head is tattooed the right and left lobes of his brain. One lobe is occupied by an extreme close-up of Elizabeth Taylor and the other by Montgomery Clift, their faces barely apart, lips barely apart, in each other’s arms on a terrace, the two most beautiful people in the history of the movies, she the female version of him, and he the male version of her.

    2.

    This is the summer of 1969, two days after Vikar’s twenty-fourth birthday, when everyone’s hair is long and no one shaves his head unless he’s a Buddhist monk, and no one has tattoos unless he’s a biker or in a circus.

    He’s been in Los Angeles an hour. He’s just gotten off a six-day bus trip from Philadelphia, riding day and night, and eating a French dip sandwich at Philippe’s a few blocks up from Olvera Street, the oldest road in the city.

    3.

    There in Philippe’s, a hippie nods at Vikar’s head and says, Dig it, man. My favorite movie.

    Vikar nods. I believe it’s a very good movie.

    Love that scene at the end, man. There at the Planetarium.

    Vikar stands and in one motion brings the food tray flying up, roast beef and au jus spraying the restaurant—

    —and brings the tray crashing down on the blasphemer across the table from him. He manages to catch the napkin floating down like a parachute, in time to wipe his mouth.

    Oh, mother, he thinks. "A Place in the Sun, George Stevens, he says to the fallen man, pointing at his own head, NOT Rebel Without a Cause," and strides out.

    4.

    Tattooed under Vikar’s left eye is a red teardrop.

    5.

    Is it possible he’s traveled three thousand miles to the Movie Capital of the World only to find people who don’t know the difference between Montgomery Clift and James Dean, who don’t know the difference between Elizabeth Taylor and Natalie Wood? A few blocks north of Philippe’s, the city starts to run out and Vikar turns back. He asks a girl with straight blond hair in a diaphanous granny dress where Hollywood is. Soon he notices that all the girls in Los Angeles have straight blond hair and diaphanous granny dresses.

    6.

    She gives him a ride, staring at his head. She seems odd to him; he wants her to watch the road. I believe perhaps she’s been taking illicit narcotics, he thinks to himself.

    Uh, she finally starts to say, and he can see it right there in her eyes: James Dean, Natalie Wood … What will he do? She’s driving and, besides, she’s a girl. You can’t smash a girl over the head with a food tray.

    Montgomery Clift, he heads off her blunder, Elizabeth Taylor.

    Elizabeth Taylor, she nods. I’ve heard of her … pondering it a moment. Far out.

    He realizes she has no idea who Montgomery Clift is. You can let me off here, he says, and she drops him where Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards fork, at a small theater—

    7.

    —where he goes to the movies.

    A silent European film from the late twenties, it’s the worst print Vikar has seen—less a movie than a patchwork of celluloid—but he’s spellbound. In the late Middle Ages a young woman, identified in the credits only as Mlle Falconetti, is interrogated and hounded by a room of monks. The woman doesn’t give a performance, as such; Vikar has never seen acting that seemed less to be acting. It’s more an inhabitation. The movie is shot completely in close-ups, including the unbearable ending, when the young woman is burned at the stake.

    8.

    Afterward, he makes his way farther west along Sunset before cutting up to Hollywood Boulevard. Where once was the Moulin Rouge nightclub at the corner of Vine is now a psychedelic club called the Kaleidoscope. Vikar really has no idea what a psychedelic club is. Along Hollywood Boulevard are shabby old jewelry shops, used bookstores, souvenir stands, porn theaters. He’s startled there are no movie stars walking down the street. Still hungry from having sacrificed his French dip sandwich at Philippe’s, he orders a chicken pot pie at Musso & Frank, where Billy Wilder used to lunch with Raymond Chandler while they were writing Double Indemnity, both drinking heavily because they couldn’t stand each other.

    9.

    He spends a few minutes looking at the footprints outside the Chinese Theatre. He can find neither Elizabeth Taylor nor Montgomery Clift. At the box office he buys a ticket and goes inside to watch the movie.

    As Vikar traveled on what seemed an endless bus to Hollywood, the Traveler hurtles through space toward infinity. Dimensions fall away from the Traveler faster and faster until, by the end of the movie, he’s an old man in a white room where a black monolith appears to him at the moment of death. He becomes an embryonic, perhaps divine Starchild. Vikar has come to Los Angeles as a kind of starchild as well, a product of no parentage he acknowledges, vestiges of an earlier childhood falling away from him like dimensions. Vikar tells himself, I’ve found a place where God does not kill children but is a Child Himself.

    He’s now seen two movies, one of the Middle Ages and one of the future, in his first seven hours in Los Angeles. Vikar crosses Hollywood Boulevard to the Roosevelt Hotel, built by Louis B. Mayer, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford in the year the movies discovered sound.

    10.

    Vikar walks through the Roosevelt lobby, which has a statue of Charlie Chaplin. With its stone arches and palm fronds, it’s slightly seedy; the first Academy Awards were held here forty years before. At the front desk, he asks for room 928.

    The young clerk behind the front desk says, That room’s not available. His long hair is tucked into his collar beneath his coat and tie.

    Are you certain?

    Yes.

    Seventeen years ago, Vikar says, Montgomery Clift lived in that room.

    Who?

    Vikar restrains the urge to pick up the small bell from the desk and lodge it in the philistine’s forehead. For a moment he considers the image of the clerk having a bell for a third eye, like a cyclops. People could walk up and ring it, and every time they did, this infidel would remember Montgomery Clift. Montgomery Clift, Vikar says, "lived here after making A Place in the Sun, when he was filming From Here to Eternity."

    11.

    The clerk says, "Hey, man, have you seen Easy Rider? I usually don’t go to movies. I’m into the Music."

    What?

    The Music. The clerk turns up the radio. There’s a song playing about a train to Marrakesh: All aboard the train, the singer sings. It’s horrible; they’ve forgotten A Place in the Sun for this? Vikar also suspects there’s something narcotics-related about the song.

    Montgomery Clift’s ghost lives in this hotel, Vikar says.

    No, the clerk answers, that’s that D. W. guy.

    D. W.?

    It’s in the brochure. He died here or something, busted. He adds, I don’t mean busted like by the cops—I mean broke. His ghost rides up and down the elevators trying to figure out where to go.

    D. W. Griffith?

    I think that’s him, the clerk nods, impressed, yeah, D. W. Griffin. He looks at the register. Room 939 is available, that’s in the other corner at the other end of the hall, so it’s like Room 928 except backward.

    All right.

    By now, the clerk shrugs, they may have changed around all the numbers anyway.

    The ninth floor is probably still the ninth floor, says Vikar.

    The clerk seems slightly stunned by this. Yeah, he allows, a sense of revelation sweeping over him, "the ninth floor is probably still the ninth floor." In the register Vikar signs Ike Jerome, which is not an alias. No one, including himself, calls him Vikar yet. He pays cash; the clerk gives him the key and Vikar heads to the elevator. That was heavy, man, the clerk calls after him, that thing about the ninth floor.

    12.

    When Vikar steps in the elevator and pushes the button for the ninth floor, one by one all of the other floors light up too.

    At each floor, the door slides open. Vikar feels someone brushing past him, leaning out and peering just long enough to determine it’s the wrong floor, before continuing on to the next.

    13.

    Vikar can’t see the Chinese Theatre from the window of room 939, but he can see the Hollywood Hills and the Magic Castle above Franklin Avenue. Houses topple down the hills in adobe and high-tech, some rounded like space ships. Leaning far to the right and staring west toward Laurel Canyon Vikar could also see, if he looked for it, the speck of the house that he’ll live in nine years from now. The morning after his first night in the Roosevelt, he walks down the hallway and finds, as the clerk advised, room 928 at the other end, and peers in as the maid makes it up. From its window overlooking Orange Street, Montgomery Clift couldn’t see the Chinese Theatre either.

    14.

    That first night in the Roosevelt, Vikar has the same dream he always has after every movie he sees, the same dream he’s had since the first movie he ever saw. In his dream there’s a horizontal-shaped rock and someone lying on the rock very still. The side of the rock seems to open, beckoning to Vikar, like a door or chasm.

    15.

    Vikar stays at the Roosevelt three nights. When he checks out, he asks the clerk where Sunset Boulevard is. The clerk directs him south on Orange. When you get to Sunset, he says, see if you can hitch a ride west. He motions with his thumb. That will be to your right, man.

    I know which direction is west.

    That’s where the Music is.

    Thank you, Vikar says, leaving quickly, still inclined to lodge the desk bell in the clerk’s head.

    16.

    He sees phosphorescent cars and vans painted with Cinema-Scopic women with stars in their hair and legs apart and the cosmos coming out of the center of them, bearing travelers and starchildren. At Crescent Heights, Sunset winds down into the Strip’s gorge, and Vikar stands as if at the mouth of wonderland, gazing at Schwab’s Drugstore …

    … he knows the story about Lana Turner being discovered there isn’t true, but he also knows that Harold Arlen wrote Over the Rainbow there and that F. Scott Fitzgerald had a heart attack there. Vikar is unclear whether F. Scott Fitzgerald actually died there; he lived somewhere around the block. Actually, he’s unclear about F. Scott Fitzgerald, beyond the fact he was a writer whose work included The Women, starring Joan Crawford, although he didn’t get a screen credit.

    17.

    Across the street, on an island in the middle of the intersection, is a club called the Peppermint Lounge. Another kid with long hair points Vikar north, up the boulevard into the canyon. Check it out, he advises, staring at Vikar’s head, about half way up you’ll come on this old fucked-up house where people crash. The hippie adds, in a manner at once conspiratorial and breezy, Lots of chicks up there who don’t wear anything, man.

    18.

    An hour later, halfway up Laurel Canyon Boulevard, grand stone steps swirl into the trees, to a ruin a little like Gloria Swanson’s mansion in Sunset Boulevard. William Holden’s role in Sunset Boulevard was written for Montgomery Clift, who turned it down because he was afraid the character of a younger man kept by an older actress was too much like him; at the time Clift was seeing an older actress, one of the rare romantic relationships with a woman he had. Someone at the country store in the belly of the canyon tells Vikar the house is where Harry Houdini lived while trying to become a movie star in the twenties, making movies with titles like The Man From Beyond, Terror Island, The Grim … The Grim … The Grim what …?

    19.

    The only chick Vikar finds who doesn’t wear anything is three years old. Standing in the clearing of what was once the house’s great living room, she has dark curls and a preternatural gaze.

    She looks at Vikar, the pictures of the man and woman on his head, the tattooed teardrop beneath his left eye. She’s undecided whether to laugh or cry. A paternal distress at the vulnerability of the little girl standing alone before him sweeps through Vikar, and he feels a surge of rage at whoever could have abandoned her here. For a few minutes the man and girl study each other there under the cover of the canyon’s trees.

    Zazi.

    20.

    Vikar turns to look over his shoulder at the voice behind him.

    The most beautiful woman he’s ever seen off a movie screen calls to the little girl. With long auburn hair and a tiny perfect cleft in her chin, in the same gossamer dress that all of the young women in Los Angeles wear, she smiles at the tattooed man a cool, almost otherworldly smile he’s never seen, its source a secret amusement. At the same time, he’s relieved to sense in the woman the same concern for the girl’s safety that he feels. The woman’s eyes lock his; he smiles back. But she’s not smiling at him, rather she’s smiling at her power to enchant him—and it’s like a stab to his heart for him to realize that he is the reason for her concern, that she would believe for a moment he could hurt a child. When the woman’s eyes fix on his and she softly says the girl’s name again, it’s as if trying not to provoke a wild animal only feet away.

    Zazi. This time the young woman glides slowly to the middle of the ruins to take her daughter and back away from Vikar slowly, clutching the girl to her. Neither the woman nor the girl takes her eyes off him. The woman looks at Vikar a moment longer as if to make certain the spell will hold long enough to get the girl to safety.

    Then she turns and carries the child across the boulevard to a house on the opposite corner, the small girl watching Vikar over her mother’s shoulder.

    21.

    Like the wild animal the woman believed he was, Vikar stalks the grounds of the Houdini House in the dark, pounding on the walls, trying to remember. The Grim …?

    Houdini was related to one of the Three Stooges by marriage. I’ll bet I’m the only one in this Heretic City who knows that.

    22.

    Vikar later learns that the Houdini House has secret passages leading to all parts of the canyon, although he never finds one. The house across the boulevard on the corner, where the young woman took her daughter, once belonged to Tom Mix. Now it’s occupied by an extended family of hippies led by a musician with a Groucho Marx mustache. Hippies and musicians everywhere …

    23.

    … but something has happened, it’s become a ghost canyon.

    Above the ruins of the house, Vikar sees caves in the hillside. A fire burns in one and he makes his way to it, climbing through the trees. The cave has two entrances, forming a small tunnel. Inside the cave, a young couple huddles around the fire.

    24.

    Vikar stands in the mouth of the cave. The young man and woman look at Vikar, at his bald illustrated dome, and spring from the fire lurching for the cave’s other opening.

    Vikar watches them run off the hillside into the night air, then plummet the rest of the way down into the trees and the stone ruins of the house below.

    25.

    In the August heat, the lights of small houses in the canyon shimmer like stars while the stars in the sky hide in the light and smog of the city, as though outside has turned upside down.

    In the tattoo on Vikar’s head, Montgomery Clift looks away slightly. It’s as if he’s not only rapt with Elizabeth Taylor but hiding from everyone the face that would be so disfigured later upon smashing his Chevy into a tree, when it would be Taylor who first reached the site of the crash and held him in her arms.

    26.

    When Vikar wakes in the cave the next morning, the campfire is out. Standing in the cave’s mouth he looks out over the canyon; he sees houses and the small country store below, but not a soul. The canyon is abandoned and still. Hello? he calls to the trees.

    27.

    As the minutes pass, there’s not a sign of life for as far as he can see …

    … until in the distance, at the end of the canyon boulevard, a police car appears and then another behind it, and another, stealthily winding their way up through the hills, sirens silent but coming fast, determined in their approach.

    Vikar watches the police as they grow nearer. They stop below at the foot of the stone steps that lead up to the house, a dozen cops emptying from four cars and fanning out at Vikar’s feet …

    … then one looks up and spots him. Then they all stop to look. They draw their guns and charge the hillside.

    28.

    Below, the closest cop points his gun up at Vikar and tells him to raise his arms. In the mouth of the cave, overlooking the canyon, Vikar is too stunned to move. Arms in the air! the cop repeats. Other cops emerge from the trees at the foot of the hill, their guns also pointed. Vikar raises his arms. Get on your knees! says the first cop.

    I have to pee, Vikar says.

    The cop says, Get. Down. On. Your. Fucking. Knees. Vikar lowers himself to his knees. Looking around, he can see hippies come out of their houses all over the canyon to watch, he can see in the doorway of the house across the street the beautiful woman with the small girl. The cop tells Vikar to lie on his stomach and keep his arms away from his sides, then slide slowly down the hillside on his stomach.

    Slowly? Vikar says, apparently to no one as he comes hurtling down the mountain, face skimming dirt and rock all the way. When he

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