“Failure, if you can get through it, is a great experience to have had.” – Dominick Dunne
Today I got the news that Dominick Dunne died at age 83. I had only recently, within the past year, discovered Dunne’s collected writing about high-society crime, although I’d read various pieces in Vanity Fair off and on for years. I became so intrigued by him that I bought his memoir The Way We Lived Then, which is narrative but also a collection of incredible photos from his years in Hollywood, when he was married to his wife, Lenny. He was a compulsive photo-taker and scrap-booker (not in the way people scrapbook now, with all the doodads and foo-foos and cut-outs), in addition to an avid party-giver, and the book is a moving document of a bygone era when life, for Dunne, was easy and he was living in Shangri-La.