Hollywood Notebook

by Wendy C. Ortiz

Hollywood Notebook is a prose poem-ish memoir of fragments. Ortiz takes us through the streets of Los Angeles and the internal maps she's charting as she moves from her twenties to her thirties in a studio apartment in Hollywood. A cartography of love, loss, and transformation, Hollywood Notebook is a portrait of the author's psyche overlaid on a map of the city she makes her home.

“…In the equally honest and courageous Hollywood Notebook, Ortiz reflects on the hard lessons learned as a young woman navigating through the streets of Los Angeles. By gathering bits of wisdom and poignant life experiences, she pieces together a portrait of her youth as complex and dynamic as the place she calls home.” --Rigoberto González, for NBC News

Hollywood Notebook is on NBC News/Latino Summer Reading List: 9 Great New Books by Latino Authors: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/su...

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Poetry, Travel, Biography, Feminism, Contemporary

160 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2015

About the author

Wendy C. Ortiz is the author of Excavation: A Memoir (Future Tense Books, 2014), Hollywood Notebook (Writ Large Press, 2015), and the dreamoir Bruja (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016). In 2016 Bustle named her one of “9 Women Writers Who Are Breaking New Nonfiction Territory.” Her work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, The Rumpus, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the National Book Critics Circle Small Press Spotlight blog. Her writing has appeared in such venues as The New York Times, Joyland, StoryQuarterly, and a year-long series appeared at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Most recently her “Urban Liminal” series of texts appear alongside signature graphic representations of the projects of Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects in the book Amplified Urbanism (2017). Wendy is a psychotherapist in private practice in Los Angeles.

Visit Wendy at wendycortiz.tumblr.com or at her website, wendyortiz.com.

Reviews

[Antonia Crane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some writers bloat my heart so that it can be trampled in a gazillion new ways like Rob Roberge, Cheryl Strayed and Lidia Yuknavitch. Others tap into fresh and ancient terrain so poised and raw and brave it makes me want to stop the world because why bother breathing when we have Anthony Doerr, David Treur and Roxane Gay? Wendy C. Ortiz’s writing simply demands I have a more noticing heart. Perhaps acknowledge the galaxy in which I exist. Look again at how fast the light changes into night in late summer. Rethink the season: fall, like it’s an action verb. Perhaps I should prioritize being more gentle. Send my friends more post-marathon care packages. “Hollywood Notebook” (Writ Large Press) is less a notebook than an invocation to becoming. And in Los Angeles, and Hollywood in particular, Wendy C. Ortiz’s “Hollywood Notebook” is as deeply relevant and intoxicating as it is sticky and melancholic. Sylvia Plath adjacent in tone and in form, “Hollywood Notebook” is intimate, plucky, alluringly dark and soft. From a recipe for resuscitation (including 2 cats with liquid green eyes and an open window) to lines like “Is it unusual that I notice the absence of a stranger?” to a pair of red panties asked for by a strange fellow on the Internet offering $5 which is interrupting Oriz’s departures and arrivals. “Hollywood Notebook” travels in place and time effortlessly, never getting lost and never leaving home: Selma, Cahuenga, the desert and back, Ortiz is always coming and going and back again, which is, perhaps the same place. In the spirit of this sentiment, Ortiz quotes Ann Carson “Are there two ways of knowing the world—a submissive and devouring way? They end up roughly the same place.” While reading the short, numbered chapters, I am compelled to certain pages, places and moments over and over because Ortiz’s noticing heart makes me want to be more fully alive. And that is something to strive for here in Hollywood. Perhaps the very thing we have been seeking the whole time.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A shape-shifting book of journal entry-like stories, moments, and emotional fireworks. It's fun to imagine Wendy as this free-wheeling 20-something figuring out what the world has to offer her.

[Kate Maruyama · Rating 5 out of 5]

Open and honest and filled with those careful details that make a life what it is, make Los Angeles what it is, Wendy Ortiz's tiny chapters become brushstrokes in a larger, vibrant fantastic picture that I can't stop looking at. Excellent bedside table reading.

[Ben]

We are left with the breathless belief, that for Ortiz writing is performance art, and that she is ever-discovering, then illuminating, fragments of herself on the page, only to have the words, and memories, stamp themselves onto our collective brain.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hollywood Notebook is an interesting follow-up to Excavation: a series of modified journal entries that were originally published as blog posts. Whereas Excavation feels like the revelation of old secrets, Hollywood Notebook revels (and sometimes recriminates) in the life of an artist finding her way in the world. Although Ortiz is an L.A. native, I suspect that those who came to California to pursue his or her passion (as I did) will find passages that strike a familiar chord. Again and again I was reminded of my first L.A. apartment in North Hollywood and participation in the local literary scene. (Eagles Coffee Pub anyone?)

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant, honest, startling in its beauty. Ortiz's voice is unlike anyone's, a voice I continue to seek out, a voice that instructs, a voice I will return to again and again and again. I particularly love how this memoir is as much about process as it is about story.

It was an honor and pleasure to interview the author: http://www.bustle.com/articles/74268-...

[Karrie Higgins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Genius magic. I think those two words capture it. Genius dreamy magic.

[Melissa Grunow · Rating 4 out of 5]

“As beautiful as the palm trees are, as placid as the sky looks, I am still disturbed at the world I find myself in.”
Hollywood Notebook is a collection of journal entries that have taken the shape of lyrical essays that search for one’s self in the context of place first while relationships and personal interactions come secondary. Other people are often referred to only by an initial, other times, dismissed with pronouns. In that regard, the concept of place—a street in the neighborhood, a hotel room, the narrator’s apartment, Hollywood in general—take on the role of main character, a co-dependent contemporary antagonist that is the simultaneous life force and oppressor of our beloved heroine. The shape of each piece shifts from essay to prose poetry to a litany of abstractions, all presented as a representation of the fractured mind of a narrator who is trying to make sense of an insensible world. This memoir taps into the deepest sense of the reader’s humanity, cracks it open, and invites it to the surface. It will put you in touch with your innermost thoughts, forbidden desires, and promises of something better to look forward to next. The imagery will toy with your ability to imagine and the stylistic prose will force you to take pause, reflect, and wonder at what might become of us all with our next decision, our next action.

[Downward · Rating 2 out of 5]

wendy ortiz writes great sentences and every now and then this book hits the emotional flashpoint of someone in transition bumping up against something but too often its too vague, the people in it real but out of reach the situations too abstract to feel much about. at its best you get a sense of location that allows you access to something bigger but often it felt like scrolling through different peoples live journals in 2003.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hollywood Notebook is a collection of journal entries that read like prose poems--or maybe prose poems that read like journal entries. Reading this gave me the impression that I was flipping through an old photo album, but in addition to images, I had sounds, sensations, abstract thoughts, astrology, alcohol, and old friends and lovers at my fingertips.

[Jan Stinchcomb · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to read this before it hit the masses.
This is a beautiful book about Los Angeles and living the artist's life. Whether you love reading, writing, or both, don't miss this opportunity to immerse yourself in Wendy Ortiz's world.

[Matt Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remember all those unique, amazing, tragic, momentous, of-the-moment moments you had in college/early adulthood? Remember how you said you would write about it all because the world deserved to know? Well, Wendy Ortiz wrote hers down in a beautiful fusion of poetic prose. What's your excuse?

[Vicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like reading notebooks more than I realized.

[Alexa Almeida · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Hollywood Notebook, Wendy C. Ortiz creates a hallway for the reader to walk through, and at the end of the hall is a door to her mind. An exemplary showing of how prose and non fiction can exist in harmony, Ortiz tells her story. A story of moving from place to place, struggling with the cultural and social dependence on monogamy, all while entering her 30's and trying to find time to write.
From a craft standpoint, Ortiz uses simple language that is concise in its meaning as well as its emotional impact. The language is poetic, but is not flowery or melodramatic. The sentence structure is short, and often fragmented. Ortiz's use of colons and semicolons mimics that of Sylvia Plath in her Unabridged Journals- Ortiz even goes so far as to quote Plath's journal within the notebook. The chapters are short, anywhere from half a page to 3 or 4 pages at the most, which lends itself to easy readership. Bluntly honest and raw, a true pleasure to read.
Hollywood Notebook is a wonderful piece of literature that can be read by; students of creative writing, women, people who struggle with monogamy, people who have lived in Hollywood, people who move often-- really anyone with the interest and desire to read it.

[Daze · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had the pleasure of attending a Wendy Ortiz reading in 2015/2016. I think it was my senior year of college at CSU, Northridge. I had just finished reading her memoir "Excavation," a raw account of her teen years and romance with a high school English teacher. I expected to dive into more unsanctimonious ground and I was not disappointed. She paints a scene that's familiar in an unfamiliar way--a deconstruction of L.A. from her lens. They are slices of life from her 20s/early 30s as an artist. I found it eerie and fitting that I read this at this time as I found it resonate with thoughts, anxieties, failures and successes in my own life. I look forward to my future in L.A. with more joy now regardless of where I "go" in life.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know why this was the book I confidently grabbed from the shelf, but it was the book I needed right now. I'm feeling very burned out and all I want is, like, time to myself to think. I want a life of the mind, even if that sounds super cheesy. Turns out reading someone else's document of the life of their mind is the next best thing to having time for introspection. Reading this made me feel like I was living alone in Berkeley again or in grad school again--that the days are full of nothing but time and your friends are always beautiful and your writing is paramount.

[Sruthi Narayanan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The observational tone was great, but I found myself missing the introspection to go along with it. (I felt this most during the sections about writing - "writers writing about writing" is already a tall enough order!)

[Hannah Wohlenberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

favorite book about LA that i've read so far

[Ben Brackett · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were great snippets, but I would get lost between them.

[Sarah Schulman · Rating 5 out of 5]

First person fragments- snapshots from a life in a very specific place, the struggles and joys of one person's evolution and self-reflections in Hollywood- not the industry but the neighborhood.

[Danny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great little fun autobiography about an ordinary person in modern hollywood.

[Taube · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like reading letters from a younger self.

[Edith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Always lovely to read a sort of memoir from someone who’s walked down the same path you’re currently walking.