When my father graduated from West Philadelphia High School in 1938 he got a job at a department store to support himself and his mother. He worked there until the war came along, at which time he joined the Navy. When Jacqueline Susann graduated from the same school two years earlier, she lit out for Broadway and never looked back.
 She acted on the stage and, later, television well enough to make a living at it but found that her real talent was for writing. Her most famous novel was Valley of the Dolls, which was published in 1966. It was the top-selling novel for 22 weeks in a row, and Susann became the first novelist to have three consecutive books on the New York Times list of best sellers. She became the first brand novelist.
 Susann, who died of cancer in 1974, worked hard on her books, typing with three fingers for eight hours a day, taking only a break for a quick lunch of blueberry yogurt or a banana. She covered the Pucci print walls of her study with index cards keeping track of her characters and plot lines. Critics were unkind and no one, including Susann, would say her books were great literature. On The David Frost Show the critic John Simon asked Susann, “Do you think you are writing art or are you writing trash to make a lot of money?” Her answer was, “Little man, I am telling a story. Now does that make you happy?”
 It didn't. But this novel, which follows the lives of three drug-abusing show-business women from 1945 to 1965, tells its story well and is also fun to read. It's not a horror or suspense book yet it's hard to put it down. A funny thing I realized when reading it was that I found myself turning its 466 pages at a consistent rate, as if doing so were in sync with a metronome. It is no minor skill to write prose that readers can absorb that smoothly.
 The movie came out in 1967. I got the Criterion Collection edition of it at my local library yesterday. I'm looking forward to watching it.