Starlite Terrace is the Los Angeles apartment building where the four protagonists live in the eponymous novel by Patrick Roth. Over the course of a year, from June 2002 to June 2003, four residents – Rex, Moss, Gary and June – tell their highly personal stories, centered on “average” people in or beyond midlife, whose thoughts, feelings and actions are influenced to a high degree by movies and the movie industry. In each of their singular collisions with life, a universal and mythic pattern is unfurled which gives these so-called ordinary people a dignity they have long since lost in everyday life. It is the narrator, a fifth protagonist as it were, who assembles the life shards of his characters into four “Hollywood individuation stories,” as Roth calls them.
This three-part program is about the second story in Starlite Terrace entitled “Solar Eclipse.” In Part One Patrick Roth will read the story to us. In Parts Two and Three the story will be interpreted from a depth psychological point of view by Michaela Kopp-Marx, who will take a closer look at the unfolding of certain themes and associated motifs through the tale, as they coalesce toward a center of meaning, the focus being the hero Moss (Moses) and his individuation process. Seen from a depth psychological perspective, “Solar Eclipse” portrays modern man’s confrontation with the anima; this masterfully written story exemplifies how a man can find a relationship with his feminine side.
Part One, 10-11:15 am: Patrick Roth reads his story “Solar Eclipse”
Part Two, 11:30 am-12:45 pm: Michaela Kopp-Marx begins to interpret the story
Part Three, 1:30-3 pm: Michaela Kopp-Marx concludes her interpretation of the story