Author Archive | Lawrence Grobel

About twenty years ago I flew to Michigan to do a story on Elmore Leonard, the crime writer Time magazine had called the “Dickens of Detroit” and Newsweek labeled “the best American writer of crime fiction alive, possibly the best we’ve ever had.”  Leonard lived in an exclusive suburb called Bloomfield Village and some of […]

When I was a boy I used to wonder why my father wasted so much time watching golf on television. Could anything be more boring? He played the game, but he got a kick out of watching Jack and Arnie and Lee when the major tournaments were televised. I would watch with him for a […]

This is what happens when. You get The Call from your sister. You call the airlines to change your flight to anytime today. You fly cross-country with your wife hoping that you’ll be there in time.  Your sister had given you the option, to wait another day or two and go directly to New York. […]

Cleaning my desk I came across a small clipping I had saved about Bob Knight. It was dated Sept. 29, 200. 12 years ago.  I kept clippings about Knight because I was preparing for my Playboy interview with him, which would appear in March 2001.  My desk, obviously, was in severe need of organization. Knight, […]

Once I decided to put out my work as e-books, I started going over my manuscripts very meticulously.  It took me about a year to finally push the buttons and throw them into the world. The Conversation books (Capote, Michener, Brando) were easy as they were already done and had reached a fairly decent audience […]

I saw the new Batman, Savages and Total Recall recently and as I watched, with the music playing havoc in my ears, with all the special effects bombarding my eyes, with dialogue that was at times garbled and at times inane, I found myself thinking about Citizen Kane and To Kill a Mockingbird and The […]

His name was Enrique and he was in charge of the Spanish audio room at UCLA, where I begrudgingly went as a freshman to put on ear phones and listen to the Spanish I was trying to learn. He would correct my pronunciation, he would try to be helpful, and from the look in his […]

Many years ago, when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer living in Accra, Ghana, a National Geographic photographer named Victor Englebert knocked at my door. Someone had referred him to me. He was in Ghana to do a series of photo children’s books and I invited him to stay with me.  It was the start […]

Dear Deborah, Your 90th’ birthday is worth celebrating not for the number of years you’ve lived, but for the way you’ve lived those years. 90 is a cause for celebration in and of itself, just to have survived the rigors and challenges of day-to-day living. But for you, Deborah, all that  you’ve packed in and all […]

I saw a movie that touched all of my emotions today. It was a documentary called Searching for Sugar Man and it won both a Special Jury Prize and an Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival this year. Deservedly so. I had never heard of Sixto Rodriguez. My guess you haven’t either. He was […]