John Powers

Fred worked for both. Taking us fictionally inside their heads, Spector captures how their near-visionary brilliance serves soulless values, transforming Hollywood into a place about making deals rather than about making movies. Still, my favorite parts of the book have to do with Fred and Catherine. He finds in them a mythic dimension we often feel in thinking about our own parents.

Even as we can grasp the shape of their lives, there remains some sort of irreducible mystery. Fred and Catherine feel larger than life, like characters in an old Hollywood movie. By comparison, Spector's chapters about himself, though well-written, feel a tad prosaic, like a low-budget indie. And in a way, this is fitting.

Even as we can grasp the shape of their lives, there remains some sort of irreducible mystery. Fred and Catherine feel larger than life, like characters in an old Hollywood movie. By comparison, Spector's chapters about himself, though well-written, feel a tad prosaic, like a low-budget indie. And in a way, this is fitting.

Even as we can grasp the shape of their lives, there remains some sort of irreducible mystery. Fred and Catherine feel larger than life, like characters in an old Hollywood movie. By comparison, Spector's chapters about himself, though well-written, feel a tad prosaic, like a low-budget indie. And in a way, this is fitting.

You see, for all of Spectre's verve, The Golden Hour tells a story of diminution, about the loss of youthful hopes, the corporatization of Hollywood, the movie's dwindling ability to feed our dreams, and the decline of the egalitarian America, imperfect but promising, that so many of us grew up with.

You see, for all of Spectre's verve, The Golden Hour tells a story of diminution, about the loss of youthful hopes, the corporatization of Hollywood, the movie's dwindling ability to feed our dreams, and the decline of the egalitarian America, imperfect but promising, that so many of us grew up with.

You see, for all of Spectre's verve, The Golden Hour tells a story of diminution, about the loss of youthful hopes, the corporatization of Hollywood, the movie's dwindling ability to feed our dreams, and the decline of the egalitarian America, imperfect but promising, that so many of us grew up with.

It's a book about how the soft golden light of magic hour, which makes everything look so beautiful, eventually makes way for the darkness.

It's a book about how the soft golden light of magic hour, which makes everything look so beautiful, eventually makes way for the darkness.

It's a book about how the soft golden light of magic hour, which makes everything look so beautiful, eventually makes way for the darkness.

And now here's your host, John Mulaney.

And now here's your host, John Mulaney.

And now here's your host, John Mulaney.

Okay, so normally I'd apologize for such a crack comment.

Okay, so normally I'd apologize for such a crack comment.

Okay, so normally I'd apologize for such a crack comment.

Listen, Gene, I know you think you're Gene Simmons, man, but Richard, if you're in there somewhere, please, just give me a sign.

Listen, Gene, I know you think you're Gene Simmons, man, but Richard, if you're in there somewhere, please, just give me a sign.

Listen, Gene, I know you think you're Gene Simmons, man, but Richard, if you're in there somewhere, please, just give me a sign.

In the decades after World War II, America was flooded with novels, movies, and hot-button studies pondering the nature of suburbia, its comfort in consumerism, its safety and soullessness. Nobody explored these themes any better than John Cheever, whose elegantly devastating stories captured suburban life in both its sunlit splendor and shadowy desolation.