Brendan Bernhard

Top Secret!

Brendan Bernhard
Illustration by Martha Crawford"TRUE LOVE IS LIKE SEEING GHOSTS," WROTE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD. "EVERYONE TALKS ABOUT IT, BUT FEW OF US have ever seen one." In Hollywood, something similar could be said about secret Internet tracking sites -- Web sites development executives are increasingly using to follow and comment on spec......
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English as a Foreign Language

Brendan Bernhard
ON A SATURDAY AFTERNOON, THE MAIN ACTIVITY IN downtown Los Angeles is bargain hunting. Here, where the poorly dressed search for the cheaply priced, and men with raw, battered faces line alleyways for food, the visitor to MOCA engaged in a search for cheap parking is apt to feel a......

Next Time, It Might Kill You

Brendan Bernhard
Photo courtesy Associated Press When it comes to travel, this is a golden age for the flu virus. It’s always traveled free, of course — as far as that goes, nothing has changed — but think of the options. Two hundred years ago, a flu virus wanting to get from......
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Euro Paean

Brendan Bernhard
Illustration by Paige Imatani Tim Parks is best known for his two nonfiction works, Italian Neighbors and An Italian Education, which describe his experiences as an English expat in Italy. He is, however, an excellent novelist. Europa, his ninth novel, was nominated for the Booker Prize in England, but it......

The New Cemeterians

Brendan Bernhard
Photo by Debra DiPaolo"Have a fig," says Tyler Cassity, the new owner of the Hollywood Forever cemetery, plucking one from the tree outside his office. Twenty-eight years old, smartly dressed, and handsome enough to get work at the Paramount lot on the far side of the cemetery wall, Cassity seems......
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Neckties, 9 to 5 and Cocktail Parties

Brendan Bernhard
Photo by Koch/Doubleday 1998Once upon a time - 12:20 p.m., Friday, July 17, 1959, to be exact - a little-known poet named Frank O'Hara left his office at the Museum of Modern Art in New York to get a shoeshine and some lunch, and to buy presents for friends he......
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The Mosquito Roast

Brendan Bernhard
To be a novelist, the novelist Paul Theroux tells me, it helps to suffer from "confusion, dysfunction, something problematical." It helps to be "a little disturbed." Paul Theroux does not look disturbed. He looks, as you might expect, very much the international traveler, purposeful, competent and vaguely rich. A man......

Looking for a Fight (page 2)

Brendan Bernhard
Not all that surprisingly, the fight itself is unremarkable. Part of the problem is that, like most of the women Lucia fights, Ested doesn't really box - at least, not against Lucia. She has no style, and no evident strategy except to throw quick flurries a of punches and then......

Looking for a Fight (page 1)

Brendan Bernhard
Lucia Rijker sits on a chair at the Wild Card Boxing Club, leaning forward to watch two men spar. She's quiet and attentive, and though there are people all around her, she seems alone. Her face is striking: full lips, high cheekbones, wiry bronze hair only partly hidden by a......
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World Cup ’98

Brendan Bernhard
MR. MACHIAVELLI HAS LEFT THE BUILDING Merci Dieu. The Italians are done in, and beyond the borders of the boot-shaped country itself and half a million expatriate pizzerias, the tears are not exactly flowing. The Italians ruined the last World Cup Final with their ultracautious play, and it’s a relief......