Messiah by Gore Vidal Page B

of course interested in the movies, though they no longer had the same hold over the public imagination that they had had in earlier decades when a process of film before light could project, larger than life, not only on vast screens but also upon the impressionable minds of an enormous audience made homogeneous by a common passion, shadowy figures which, like the filmy envelopes of the stoic deities, floated to earth in public dreams, suggesting a braver more perfect world where love reigned and only the wicked died. But then time passed and the new deities lost their worshipers: there were too many gods and the devotees got too used to them, realizing finally that they were only mortals, involved not in magical rites but in a sordid business. Television (the home altar) succeeded the movies and their once populous and ornate temples, modeled tastefully on baroque and Byzantine themes, fell empty, the old gods moving to join the new hierarchies, becoming the domesticated godlings of television which, although it held the attention of the majority of the population, did not enrapture, did not possess dreams or shape days with longing and with secret imaginings the way the classic figures of an earlier time had. Though I was of an age to recall the gallant days of the movies, the nearly mythical power which they had held for millions of people, not all simple, I was not really interested in that aspect of California. I was more intrigued by the manners, by the cults, by the works of this coastal people so unlike the older world of the East and so antipathetic to our race's first home in Europe. Needless to say, I found them much like everyone else, except for minor differences of no real consequence.
    I stayed at a large hotel not too happily balanced in design between the marble-and-potted-palm decor of the Continental Hotel in Paris and the chrome and glass of an observation car on a newer train.
    I unpacked, telephoned friends most of whom were not home. The one whom at last I found in was the one I knew the least, a minor film writer who had married money with great success and had, most altruistically, given up the composition of films for which the remaining movie-goers were no doubt thankful. He devoted his time to assisting his wife in becoming the first hostess of Beverly Hills. She had, I recalled from one earlier meeting, the mind of a child of twelve, but an extremely active child and a good one.
    Hastings, such was the writer's name (her name was either Ethel or Valerie, two names which I always confuse due to a particularly revolutionary course I once took in mnemonics), invited me immediately to a party. I went.
    It seemed like spring though it was autumn, and it seemed like an assortment of guests brought together in a ship's dining room to celebrate New Year's Eve though, in fact, the gathering was largely made up of close acquaintances. Since I knew almost no one, I had a splendid time.
    My hostess, beyond a brilliant greeting, a gold figure all in green with gold dust in her hair, left me alone. Hastings was more solicitous, a nervous gray man with a speech impediment which took the form of a rather charming sigh before any word which began with an aspirate.
    "We, ah, have a better place coming up. Farther up the mountains with a marvelous view of the, ah, whole city. You will love it, Gene. Ah, haven't signed a lease yet, but soon." While we talked he steered me through the crowds of handsome and bizarre people (none of them was from California I discovered: most were Central Europeans or British; those who were not pretended to be one or the other; some sounded like both). I was introduced to magnificent girls exactly like their movie selves but since they all tended to look a great deal alike, the effect was somehow spoiled. But I was a tourist and not critical. I told a striking blonde that she would indeed be excellent in a musical extravaganza based upon The Sea Gull . She thought so too and my host