History of Forgetting : Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory

by KLEIN, NORMAN M.

• ISBN13: 9781859841754
• ISBN10: 1859841759
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 1997-06-17
• Publisher: Verso

Summary

Analysis, photography and fiction combine in a bracing portrait of LA. Los Angeles is a city which has long thrived on the continual re-creation of own myth. In this extraordinary and original work, Norman Klein examines the process of memory erasure in LA. Using a provocative mixture of fact and fiction, the book takes us on an "anti-tour" of downtown LA, examines life for Vietnamese immigrants in the City of Dreams, imagines Walter Benjamin as a Los Angeleno, and finally looks at the way information technology has recreated the city, turning cyberspace into the last suburb.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Histories of Forgetting	p. 1
Building the Social Imaginary: 1885-1997
Booster Myths, Urban Erasure	p. 27
L.A. Noir and Forgetting	p. 73
Building Blade Runner	p. 94
Movie Locations	p. 103
The Panic: Imagined Fears after April 1992	p. 114
Two Neighborhoods	p. 123
Imaginary Vietnamese in Los Angeles
Introduction	p. 147
Stories in An English I Don't Speak: A Novel	p. 151
Docufables
Witnesses After the Fact	p. 219
Fictions	p. 226
Asi es la Vida
The Phoenix Tree
The Unreliable Narrator
Noir as the Ruins of the Left
Forgetting on the Screen
The Most Photographed and Least Remembered City in the World	p. 247
The Imaginary LAPD	p. 263
Conclusion
Suburban Noir and Cyberspace	p. 295
Where is Forgetting Located?	p. 301
Afterword: Borges' Father	p. 318
Index	p. 320
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.