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with others’reactions to me, for example. They watch me when I say this. I flush very slightly at having made this statement. I’m the least self-revelatory person I know, but they were listening so intently. Well then. I return to my point. Half of any book, I say, is just a mirror in which you do or do not see yourself. But, and this is just my opinion, the best readers try to fit themselves into the writer’s mind rather than the reverse. Take a step toward your authors, and they will repay you twofold.
    They listen. And still the conversation stumbles along. They take no risks. They have, I think grimly, no courage.
    I’m losing patience and about to look at my watch. And something occurs to me. If you were directing this, I ask them, how would you cast it.
    Within two minutes J.J. is waving a cell phone like a switchblade and threatening to call Bonnie Timmermann, the casting director, because obviously such-and-such an actress, who Bonnie happens to love, possesses ex-act-ly the qualities the book’s author ascribes to her main character. Considering the actress’s latest performance, I personally find J.J.’s a rather unusual reading, and I tell him this, and so he immediately cites three different pages from the book at me, slams down a suddenly forceful, precise critique, and I see his point. Stacey dismisses the actress (as does Melanie, though for wildly different reasons), brutally details a New York Times review (eviscerating), suggests a different actress and two supporting actors, and quotes text from the book to support all of it (she has, to our surprise, underlined these sections), but J.J. will not be quashed and says oh, hell, if Stacey casts the supporting characters that way then she has totally missed the author’s whole point, and Stacey is arming herself with her own cell phone and citing filmography right and left and saying fine, then why don’t they just call Stephen Gaghan and ask him , and Melanie is championing her own choice, a young Golden Globe winner two years earlier (“Too young,” snaps Stacey; “Not if Tony Gilroy directs her,” retorts Melanie and with a certain menace goes for her own cell phone).
    I make my first rule, which is No cell phones, and they back off, somewhat. I excise the extraneous comments, supply some textual pieces they missed (I am severe with them about a character they have all, to my mind, grossly misinterpreted), guide them back from a silly subplot they’ve gotten lost in. But essentially the textual work is theirs, and from that point onward it is decent work. Not brilliant, but, for a first outing, quite competent. We also arrive at what I must admit is a rather fascinating cast, which would, were the book filmed, add a radical and contemporary spin to Brontë’s original intent. At 7:00, I stand up. Howard will be home soon.
    J.J. peers at his watch again, this time with surprise.
    Â 
    I was seeing them to the drive when they asked me how I’d gotten here. In those words. The question confused me at first; I thought they meant our Realtor. I tend to be literal. They said no, no, Los Angeles. As in living here. “You were raised in London, yes?” they added.
    Ah. Yes. Well, actually I was raised many places. My father, Matthew Hammersmith, was in the British diplomatic service. My mother was American. ( They waited.) Where: Hong Kong, I said, for several years when I was young. Rome. Oh, lots of places.
    Where had I met Howard?
    New York, I said. Howard and I met at Columbia.
    And so? Stacey indicated our house, and J.J. pointed at the hills, the Pacific beyond, and I finally got it. Right.
    How I got here. We came to L.A. because in 1970 we ran—quite literally—into Bennett Cerf, the head of Random House. The old train from Paris to Avignon swerved, and I lost my balance and flew outstretched-hands-first into a well-dressed man as Howard tried to catch me.