Summary

In "Brick and Pigeons," Israel hints not only of her coming career of forging letters which she sold to autograph dealers for $75 each but also that she gets caught committing this crime by the FBI. She wrote the letters in the same rent-controlled apartment that she settled in when she was writing her first book, a biography of Tallulah Bankhead. Israel indicates that her first book was a success and she thought her life would only get better from that point forward. Her second book, Kilgallen, made the best-seller list of the New York Times.

In "Wretched and Excessive," Israel describes herself as being careless and spontaneous with her money. She took a good deal of time off after her second book. Advances were extended to her to research topics for books, but when Israel discovered with her research that...