Publisher's Weekly
As he did in Metropolis , Charyn once again revisits old haunts, concentrating here on the movies (and movie houses, like Loew's Paradise in the upper Bronx) that have obsessed him most of his life. Lovingly he recalls America's screen idols: Astaire and Rogers; Lombard, Grable and Hayworth; Fay Wray and May Clarke; Bogart and Powell; directors Orson Welles and Arthur Penn; screenwriters Daniel Fuchs and Raymond Chandler; moguls Thalberg and Mayer. He meets and, in some cases, works with Paul Newman, Otto Preminger, Viveca Lindfors; Borges and Primo Levi would become mentors and kindred spirits. The author travels beyond Hollywood to Henri Langlois's Cinematheque archive in Paris, Italy's Cinecitta studios and an international meeting of crime writers at Gijon, on the Bay of Biscay. Some of Charyn's loyal readers may be disappointed by the superficiality and lack of focus in this, his 23rd volume.

Library Journal
Charyn, the author of 19 novels, including Metropolis ( LJ 10/1/86) and Darlin' Bill (Donald I. Fine, 1985) explores how movies ''recapture for us all the splintered signs of our earliest memories, when past, present, and future had no real distinction . . . .'' He ruminates on the blasted Hollywood careers of fellow novelists Raymond Chandler and F. Scott Fitzgerald; he meets Paul Newman and Mae Clark (Jimmy Cagney's grapefruit target); and he recalls working for Otto Preminger when that director's career was in disarray. This is a wildly uneven book whose observations range from banal to touching. Charyn also has the jarring habit of dropping quotes into his text without introduction (although he does provide citations at the back of the book). Libraries with bigger film collections may want this; for others, it is a discretionary purchase.-- Thomas Wiener, formerly with ''American Film,'' Washington, D.C.