Writing Los Angeles : A Literary Anthology

by Ulin, David L.

• ISBN13: 9781931082273
• ISBN10: 1931082278
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-09-01
• Publisher: Penguin Group USA

Summary

Los Angeles has always been a place of paradisal promise and apocalyptic undercurrents. Simone de Beauvoir saw a kaleidoscopic "hall of mirrors," Aldous Huxley a "city of dreadful joy." Jack Kerouac found a "huge desert encampment," David Thomson imagined "Marilyn Monroe, fifty miles long, lying on her side, half-buried on a ridge of crumbling rock." In Writing Los Angeles, The Library of America presents a glittering panorama in fiction, poetry, essays, journalism, and diaries by more than seventy writers. It brings to life the entrancing surfaces and unsettling contradictions of The City of Angels, from Raymond Chandler's evocation of murderous moods fed by the Santa Ana winds to John Gregory Dunne's affectionate tribute to "the deceptive perspectives of the pale subtropical light." Here are fascinating strata of Los Angeles history, from the 1920s oil boom to 1980s graffiti art, from flamboyant evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson to surf music genius Brian Wilson, from German emigré intellectuals to hard-bitten homicide cops. Here are fragile ecosystems, architectural splendors, and social chasms, in the words of writers as various as M.F.K. Fisher, William Faulkner, Bertolt Brecht, Evelyn Waugh, Octavio Paz, Joan Didion, Norman Mailer, Walter Mosley, Mona Simpson, and Charles Mingus. Art Pepper discovers the Central Avenue of the 1940s jazz scene; screenwriter Robert Towne reflects on Chinatown's origin; David Hockney teaches himself to drive; Pico Iyer finds at LAX "as clear an image as exists today of the world we are about to enter." Writing Los Angelesis an incomparable literary tour guide to a city of shifting identities and endless surprises.

Author Biography

David L. Ulin, editor, is a frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times, the LA Weekly, and other publications. He recently edited Another City, an anthology of contemporary Los Angeles poetry and prose.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. xiii
from Echoes in the City of the Angels	p. 1
The Land	p. 20
from The Rules of the Game	p. 26
from Sixty Years in Southern California 1853-1913	p. 40
California and America	p. 47
from Laughing in the Jungle	p. 51
Los Angeles. A Rhapsody	p. 55
Sister Aimee	p. 63
from Oil!	p. 67
from Queer People	p. 78
from God Sends Sunday	p. 88
The City of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels	p. 91
Paradise	p. 108
Golden Land	p. 131
Pacific Village	p. 152
A Thing Shared	p. 158
from Promised Land	p. 162
Red Wind	p. 170
from Ask the Dust	p. 218
from The Day of the Locust	p. 225
from Diaries	p. 231
Last Kiss	p. 251
from Autobiography: Hollywood	p. 269
A Table at Ciro's	p. 273
Landscape of Exile	p. 284
Hollywood Elegies	p. 285
Californian Autumn	p. 286
The Democratic Judge	p. 286
The Fishing-Tackle	p. 287
Garden In Progress	p. 288
from Journals	p. 290
from If He Hollers Let Him Go	p. 293
from America Is in the Heart	p. 299
from Southern California Country: An Island on the Land	p. 306
from North from Mexico: Blood on the Pavements	p. 320
from America Day by Day	p. 336
Hollywood	p. 351
Death in Hollywood	p. 357
from The Labyrinth of Solitude	p. 365
The Pedestrian	p. 370
The Mattress by the Tomato Patch	p. 375
from The Barbarous Coast	p. 385
from On the Road	p. 393
from "Ocian in View"	p. 398
The Slide Area	p. 405
from Slum by the Sea	p. 419
from Superman Comes to the Supermarket	p. 423
The Lost World	p. 428
The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby	p. 438
Goodbye Surfing, Hello God!	p. 465
Los Angeles Notebook	p. 484
The Getty	p. 490
Quiet Days in Malibu	p. 493
Fire Season	p. 503
Waiting	p. 510
Betting on now	p. 512
The Death of the Father	p. 514
from The Kindness of Strangers	p. 517
from Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies	p. 535
from Beneath the Underdog	p. 558
from Bike Riding in Los Angeles	p. 562
Autopia	p. 570
The City of Robots	p. 582
from David Hockney by David Hockney	p. 591
Los Angeles: The Know-How City	p. 596
from The Sexual Outlaw	p. 614
Eureka!	p. 622
from Straight Life	p. 641
from Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees	p. 647
L.A. Glows	p. 666
Preface and Postscript to Chinatown	p. 667
August, Los Angeles, Lullaby	p. 684
Angel Baby Blues	p. 687
from Anywhere But Here	p. 690
Night Song of the Los Angeles Basin	p. 710
from Golden Days	p. 713
from I Was Looking for a Street	p. 722
Going Up in L.A.	p. 735
from The Control of Nature	p. 750
from City of Quartz	p. 766
City of Specters	p. 778
from Devil in a Blue Dress	p. 795
Las Vistas	p. 801
Coming Home to Van Nuys	p. 808
The Tooth of Crime	p. 812
from Volcano	p. 827
Where Worlds Collide	p. 836
Burl's	p. 851
from The Atlas	p. 862
from Holy Land	p. 865
Beneath Mulholland	p. 870
Sources and Acknowledgments	p. 875
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