The mesology of a child can be resumed in two living environments: the family and the school.

“Now Beacon, Now Sea,” his first memoir, is perhaps more straightforward than his voicey, plotty novels, and he indulges in novelistic and cinematic flourishes — cascading lists, lyrical still lifes — only occasionally.

I knew that Julia Morgan was a Beaux Arts graduate, and through my mind there trooped a bizarre procession of girls who have studied one thing or another in Paris. They usually come home dressed in a color scheme of the impressionistic school, with their talent merely a by-product of a wonderful new set of mannerisms and a novel and fuzzy way of doing their hair. Yet here was a young woman dressed in drab and severely hair pinned.

Instead, the unions persisted in believing they could defeat Murdoch through a unified campaign of picket lines, blackings and boycotts.