Containers:

Box 58, Folder 8

Scope and content:

In the fifth of his thirteen journals, dating from August 13, 1977 to November 15, 1979, Paul Monette records his thoughts on moving to Los Angeles, his career, and his increasingly busy schedule.

Sporadically kept, the fifth journal begins by chronicling Monette and his partner Roger Horwitz's trip to London. Soon thereafter, when Roger secures a new job as a lawyer with a West Coast development firm, the journal shifts its focus to their impending move to Los Angeles. Eventually buying a home on Kings Road in Hollywood (now West Hollywood), where he and Roger lived out the rest of their lives, Monette records his initial excitement over the canyon neighborhood of Beverly Glen. They rent a house there for a year. Throughout the journal, Monette details multiple trips back east to Boston, New Haven, and New York City as well as a vacation he takes with Roger to Hawaii. As the journal records, the couple celebrate their fourth and fifth anniversaries, respectively, by camping on the California-Oregon border and by renting cabins at Big Sur. During these years, Monette mentions "cruising" at public parks and abandoned docks as well as attending adult movie houses. The journal twice records Monette and Roger going to the doctor to be treated for gonorrhea. Monette frequently refers to using "dope" and, on occasion, cocaine (or, as he sometimes calls it, "tooting"). The fifth journal also notes that Monette's parents and brother begin treating Roger "like family." The journal chronicles his parents' visits out west to see him, his parents' and brother's financial difficulties, a discussion he and his parents have about his novels' gay subject matter, and a few occasions he and Roger spend with Roger's parents, Al and Bea (referred to as the "in-laws").

For the most part, however, the fifth journal conveys a sense of Monette's increasingly hectic and demanding schedule as well as his desire to shift his creative focus from poetry to novels and screenplays. During this period, Monette describes working on multiple writing projects, sometimes jotting down notes on their themes and plots within the journal. As his first novel Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll (1978) appears in print, receiving mostly positive reviews, Monette discusses writing and selling, with the help of his agent Wendy Weil, his second novel, Gold Diggers (1979), to Robert ("Bob") Wyatt at Avon Books. He mentions writing and revising his third novel, The Long Shot (1981) and novelizing, under contract to Universal Pictures, Werner Herzog's Nosferatu. Monette recounts partnering with an associate named Renee to write three screenplays. They do so under the direction of producer Howard Rosenman and Universal executive Thom Mount. They title the first two screenplays No Contest and Time Out. The third remains unnamed and incomplete by the fifth journal's end. Throughout, Monette discusses the ins and outs of Rosenman's negotiations with actors—such as Jill Clayburgh, Christopher Walken, and Peter Bogdonavich—to star in No Contest. In addition, Monette records traveling with Renee (as well as Roger) to Philadelphia to observe a court case as research for a screenplay.

The fifth journal documents, as well, Monette's increasing savoir-faire with the entertainment and publishing industries. Mingling with gay literary elite, such as Gore Vidal, Edmund White, and Christopher Isherwood (who refuses to endorse Monette's first novel), Monette frequently notes interviewing with the "gay press." Monette documents circulating in the entertainment industry as well, sighting and meeting celebrities such as LeVar Burton, John Wayne, Angie Dickenson, Robert De Niro, and John Brahm. Due to the influx of money from his various writing projects, Monette buys a Datsun and White Mercedes. The success also bolsters, maybe even inflates, Monette's sense of confidence, leading him to declare in one entry that no one is "ahead" of him as a writer, adding, "I mean it" (page 109).

The fifth journal includes some notable features. There are two photos of Monette wearing the same outfit and most likely taken during his and Roger's trip to London taped in the journal, one inside the front cover and one inside the back. A clipping that reads "The Beale house in Grey Gardens" is taped to the inside of the journal's front cover as well. Also taped inside the back cover is a photograph of what seems to be the backyard of Monette and Roger's home on Kings Road. Inside the journal is John Brahm's autograph (page 68) and diagrams of his and Roger's cabins at Big Sur river (pages 133 and 134). In the back of the journal, Monette catalogs the books he reads as well as registers some terse one-word reviews, such as "Shit" and "Marvelous."

Physical description:

144 pages; 20.5 x 26.5 cm

Access and use