Writing Los Angeles: a Literary Anthology Online Free Pdf
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Many of the book excerpts were from full-length works that I had already read: novels such as Nathaniel West's Day of the Locust, essays from Joan Didion's Slouching Toward Bethlehem; nonfiction Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, Mike Davis' City of Quartz, and Harris Newmark's diary 60 Years in Southern California, 1853-1913. I haven't read Carey McWilliams, chronicler of L.A.'s social and political landscape in the 1940s and '50s, for many, many years. One somewhat predictable outcome of this book was to make me add an alarming number of books to my TBR, or move some onto my shortlist. (I'm going to be so busy!) And quite a few of the writers were new to me (at least their work, if not their names).
Of course, with any collection like this, there will be quibbles about omissions. The most glaring single absence among male writers was Steve Erickson, brilliant contemporary film critic and author of several novels, two of which I have read and loved passionately. But more troubling is a wide gap in gender parity. Of the 78 authors represented, only 13 here are women. Come on, David Ulin, really? While most of the best-known female writers associated with Southern California are here – MFK Fisher, Joan Didion, Carol See, poets Carol Muske and Wanda Coleman --, it would have been nice to see some Susan Straight, Kate Braverman, certainly some Janet Fitch. But most shocking is the omission of Eve Babitz, whom I think of as the ultimate "L.A. Woman" of the 1970s, a woman who "gets" Los Angeles as well as anyone ever has. Babitz is somewhat obscure, sadly, a well-kept secret, but her vignette style pieces would have been perfect for this collection. If her material seems superficial, fluffy, narcissistic on the surface, scratching that surface a little reveals the spirit of the place in a deceptively casual but beautifully rhythmic prose that also celebrates her love for that place and spirit. [A few of her long-out-of-print books have recently been re-issued, so I'll definitely be re-reading those soon.]
But that said, the quality of what was here was largely top-shelf: stories by William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, F. Scott Fitzgerald, a sketch by Truman Capote about Christmas in Hollywood, and a dairy entry from Christopher Isherwood about hanging out and picnicking in Topanga Canyon in 1939 with Aldous and Maria Huxley, Greta Garbo, Bertrand Russell and Berthold Brecht (whose poetry and journals are featured in another chapter). I thought I didn't like John Fantes, but the excerpt from Ask the Dust changed my mind. There was the requisite noir of Raymond Chandler, Ross McDonald and James Cain.
The over-the-top boosterism and rampant real estate speculation in Los Angeles in the late 19th century and early 20th are described to comic effect in Steward Edwards White's novel The Rules of the Game, where, Ulin says in an introductory blurb, "everything is bigger, stranger and endlessly promoted . . . ' a great circus without a tent'" and in a section from Newmark's book. In the 1920s Louis Adamic exposes the other side of this in his book in seeing a "ruthless Los Angeles where unscrupulous self-promoters got rich off the unfulfilled hopes of deluded dreamers." He recommends arming oneself with knowledge and a sense of humor, still good advice for navigating the city today. On a more positive, optimistic and appreciative note, Vechal Lindsay's chapter "California and America," from The Art of the Moving Picture describes the new medium of the movies as a "new language" and, from the vantage point of 1915, speculates that "it is possible for Los Angeles to lay hold of the motion picture as our national text-book in Art." There are the usual send-ups of Hollywood, the movie industry, and stereotypical types populating that world, but not as many as you'd think in a book this size.
The European expat artistic community that arrived in the early 20th century is well-represented. In addition to Brecht, Isherwood and Huxley, David Hockney wrote about his arrival in Los Angeles (with an amusing anecdote about how he learned to drive). One of the biggest surprises was a selection from Tom Wolfe, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine – Flake Streamlined Baby: custom hot-rods as art and the culture that grew up around this enterprise, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Usually car talk is a giant snooze for me, but this was fascinating. MFK Fisher's "A Thing Shared" is a three-page story about a sweet moment in her childhood when she and her sister take a road trip with their father between Palmdale and L.A. This may be one of my favorite MFK Fisher stories ever, and that's saying something.
The black, Latino and Filipino experiences are all represented in various pieces, with stories about the damaging racism that's always been prevalent here and its reverberating effects, including Carey McWilliam's account of the Zoot Suit riots and Sleepy Lagoon murder trials of the early 1940s that victimized Latin youth. There's a heart-rending memoir of forbidden love between a Japanese boy and a Caucasian girl in Gardena as recently as the late 1960s (Garrett Hongo's Volcano). There are fiction and essay pieces on historical events such as an excerpt from a 1938 novel The Promised Land by Cedri Belfrage recounting the disastrous collapse of the San Francisquito dam that ruined former hero William Mulholland. A couple of pieces deal with two famous early 20th century evangelists : the controversial Aimee Semple McPherson, whose theatrical sermons my mother experienced as a child, and Bob Shuler who was a power-mongering Methodist preacher with a large radio audience, a bigot who was much-feared, and a thoroughly nasty piece of work, from all I've read. Both of them had enormous influence in their day.
I could go on, but I probably lost you several paragraphs ago. Anyone with a serious interest in Southern California history and culture would enjoy this, at least to dip in and out of once in a while. Or to immerse oneself, as I did, is fun too.
Oh, and people have been complaining about trying to get from place to place for at least 70 years, as Simone de Beauvoir did in America Day by Day in 1947,when she declared "The traffic is terrifying." Some things never change.
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David Ulin, book critic, and former book editor of the Los Angeles Times, and a New York transplant like myself, must have come to understand as well as come to terms with this side of the country by putting this extraordinary compilation of works together. The piec
(Almost) everything I know about Los Angeles, I learned from David Ulin's anthology, Another City: Writing from Los Angeles. Highly recommend this collection of essays, short stories and poems by familiar and not-so-familar writers. David Ulin, book critic, and former book editor of the Los Angeles Times, and a New York transplant like myself, must have come to understand as well as come to terms with this side of the country by putting this extraordinary compilation of works together. The pieces cover every aspect of Los Angeles life from the 1800s to the present from ocean to desert, show-biz, race riots, souped-up cars, The Beach Boys, earthquakes, and everyplace in between.
Highly recommend!
Not always a fan of anthologies, but this one is excellent. Fantastic selections from Faulkner, Mingus, Isherwood and others. It's big! A great book to flip through and nibble at.
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Initially, my interest was piqued by the Table of Contents which listed such old
In our house, we generally read fiction. In fact, I don't think I'd ever have come across David Ulin's WRITING LOS ANGELES if it hadn't been required reading for one of my husband's English classes when he was getting his advanced degree. At the end of the term, just before he "sold back" his textbooks, this anthology caught my eye and I pulled it off the pile to place in the TBR (To Be Read) pile in my home office.Initially, my interest was piqued by the Table of Contents which listed such old literary "friends" as Truman Capote, Christopher Isherwood, Raymond Chandler, Evelyn Waugh and John Rechy. And while, in honesty, I found myself a trifle bored with some of the more historic, early-days-in-Hispanic-California essays, it was well worth slogging through them in order to get to the later gems.
Of particular interest were those essays which purported to explain the unique kind of kookiness that we Los Angelenos take for granted, and which baffle outsiders who witness out lifestyles for the first time. James Cain's "On Paradise" was a particular favorite. Never in my half century of living within two miles of Hollywood and Vine, have I been able to verbalize that elusive, quirky quality of Southern California that seems so alien upon arrival, and so nature by the second year of residency. Cain not only zeros in on this phenomenon, but manages to describe it, vividly and accurately, and offers some suggestions as to its origins. Some of the fictional offerings, while a welcome change from the essays and non-fiction excerpts, do not seem LA-specific per se, but they universally manage to present some aspect of the "essence" that is uniquely Angeleno.
Perhaps the most interesting to this reader were the memoirs from the "Zoot Suit" era, the several historical essays which dealt with Amiee Semple McPherson and her contemporaries, and the anecdotal accounts of mid-century "hot rod" culture. One tends to forget, when one lives here, how truly socially innovate Southern California culture has been over the years. And for those who doubt that Los Angeles even HAS a "culture", this book will quickly disabuse you of that notion!
Here, you will find musings from insiders who were working during the pinnacle of classic Hollywood, reflections from law enforcement personnel and excerpts from local noir crime fiction, historical suppositions and personal remembrances, all of it related to Los Angeles in some manner. Moreover, though the book itself is exceedingly long (at almost 900 pages), most of the selections are short and several can be read in a single sitting.
If you live in Los Angeles, or if you live elsewhere but are curious about what's behind the biarre insanity that makes us Angelenos "tick", you can find no better resource than Ulin's anthology.
Highly, highly recommended.
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a true desert island book.
for ex. this is in it Ask the Dust followed immediately by this The Day of the Locust got this out to loan to a friend, who wnet on vacay, so i've been re-reading. just an incredible book with huge spectrum of writing: chandler next to fante next to eco next to hockney next to jan morris next to mfk fisher next ......................................
a true desert island book.
for ex. this is in it Ask the Dust followed immediately by this The Day of the Locust ...more
This book is meant to be consumed in small bits. It's perfect for picking up when you want to read something for just a few minutes. And it will
I've only read about 30% of this book, but it being an anthology, I feel qualified to say -- this has fast become one of my favorite books in my library. All the big "California" writers are here, from Capote to Didion. I love Los Angeles. I moved here 17 years ago planning to stay for 5 at the most. The Eagles were right -- you can't really ever leave.This book is meant to be consumed in small bits. It's perfect for picking up when you want to read something for just a few minutes. And it will make you fall in love with L.A., even if you are convinced that is not possible.
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Stories, articles, poems, excerpts by Angelenos, temporary residents and passers through. A must read for Angelenos and all those who love the city of angels. I picked up this gem at a book sale for €1 and couldn't believe my luck.
Stories, articles, poems, excerpts by Angelenos, temporary residents and passers through. A must read for Angelenos and all those who love the city of angels. ...more
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In additional to being amazing stories, the books discusses the rise of L.A. from the dust of the desert, and how its unending thirst affected those who lived in the city (and those who ran it).
He is also the editor of three antholo
David L. Ulin is book critic, and former book editor, of the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time, Labyrinth, and The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith, selected as a best book of 2004 by the Chicago Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle.He is also the editor of three anthologies: Another City: Writing from Los Angeles, Cape Cod Noir, and the Library of America's Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a 2002 California Book Award. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, Black Clock, Columbia Journalism Review, and on National Public Radio's All Things Considered.
Ulin teaches at USC, and in the low residency MFA in creative writing program at the University of California, Riverside's Palm Desert Graduate Center. In 2010, he was awarded a Southern California Independent Booksellers Association/Glenn Goldman Book Award for his work on Los Angeles: Portrait of a City.
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Writing Los Angeles: a Literary Anthology Online Free Pdf
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