On the ground level, this slim, elegant work tracks Ortiz’s return to an unnamed abandoned writing project; from the many contextual clues she provides, it seems that it’s her devastating first memoir, Excavation. Yet while, in a certain sense, Hollywood Notebook is a book about another book, it is also a great work in its own right. With its dynamic portrayal of a passionate, idiosyncratic artist coming into her full powers, this work is my favorite of Ortiz’s two memoirs. At 45, Virginia Woolf stated, “Very little is known about women.” Notebook captures Ortiz in her sunny, often grungy, but captivating hometown in an almost primal act of existential and artistic becoming that induces her to write so openly and evocatively that no one can credibly utter Woolf’s words again.
The Sunday Rumpus Book Review: The Amazing Heft of Wendy Ortiz’s Hollywood Notebook by Lesley Heiser.