
She applied the Page 69 Test to Typewriter Beach and shared the following:
Page 69 of Typewriter Beach recounts the afternoon after Léon Chazen, my blacklisted screenwriter, finds out he’s been blacklisted — a fact he learns when he shows up at his studio and is told by the security guard who has greeted him every morning for years that he cannot enter. Not knowing what else to do, he drives to a movie theater matinee, then leaves early only to have an FBI agent fall in beside him:Learn more about the book and author at Meg Waite Clayton's website.“Do you have time to answer a few questions, Mr. Chazan?” the agent said, lest there be any doubt that he knew exactly who Leo was, that he’d known that Leo was in that theater, that he’d waited for him.The cottage referred to is in Carmel-by-the-Sea, where much of the story takes place. Buttercup us Leo’s beautiful pale yellow roadster convertible he bought with the money he earned from selling his first screenplay. And Ole Mr. Miracle is his typewriter.
Leo climbed into Buttercup and drove off, leaving the man watching him go. He knew as surely as the agent did that it wouldn’t matter, that answers weren’t what the man was after. The FBI simply wanted Leo to know he was being watched, that at any moment he could be seen— his world changed so quickly, just as it had been in France all those years ago.
He called about the cottage that afternoon and agreed to buy it sight unseen. And long before dawn the morning the sale was to close, he loaded Ole Mr. Miracle and a few things into Buttercup, leaving everything else behind once again.
What Leo earned after that, writing secretly due to the blacklist, was so little that he had to work constantly just to pay the mortgage…
The page is a pretty nice summary of where Leo finds himself in the 1957 thread of Typewriter Beach. And that story was where Typewriter Beach started for me, with this history of voices being silenced by our own government in ways that clearly violated people’s constitutional rights.
But the novel is much broader than that, too. It’s set in 1957 and 2018 Hollywood and Carmel-by-the-Sea, and is the story of the unlikely friendship between Leo and Isabella Giori, a young actress whose studio has in mind to make her the new Grace Kelly/Hitchcock’s new blonde—if she can toe the line. It’s told from four points of view, and the smallest one, page-wise, is Leo. Most of the 1957 story is told by Isabella. And in 2018, Leo has died and his granddaughter, Gemma, is in Carmel to clean out his cottage. There, she meets Isabella and the last point-of-view character, a creative tech guy who lives in the oceanfront mansion across the road from Leo.
The page exposes one aspect of the dark history underlying the novel: the Hollywood blacklist. But another thread of the story is the particular challenges women in Hollywood faced under the studio system, and also now, and the double standard between what transgressions men are allowed (lots) compared to women (none).
The page is also largely narration, whereas the great bulk of the novel is in scene. It opens, for example, with Isabella auditioning with Hitchcock, thanks to my wise editor, Sara Nelson at Harper Books. One of her first comments was that I should open with that scene, which she said was like nothing she has ever seen. And as usual she was right—although it took me some time to see that! And Typewriter Beach ends, also in scene, with an uplifting ending that I hope leaves readers laughing and crying at the same time.
The Page 69 Test: The Four Ms. Bradwells.
The Page 69 Test: The Wednesday Daughters.
The Page 69 Test: Beautiful Exiles.
The Page 69 Test: The Last Train to London.
--Marshal Zeringue