Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology (Library of America)

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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. Beginning with Helen Hunt Jackson's romantic portrayal of the city's early days, the anthology covers a century's worth of Los Angeles writing. 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 and the 1940s Zoot Suit Riots to 1950s beat culture and 1980s graffiti art, from flamboyant evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson to surf music genius Brian Wilson. The pleasures and discontents of the Hollywood movie colony are parsed by such observers as Nathanael West, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Christopher Isherwood.

Fragile ecosystems, architectural splendors, and social chasms are examined by writers as various as M.F.K. Fisher, William Faulkner, Bertolt Brecht, Evelyn Waugh, Octavio Paz, Joan Didion, Ray Bradbury, Charles Bukowski, Walter Mosley, Mona Simpson, and Charles Mingus. Art Pepper discovers the Central Avenue jazz scene of the 1940s; Salka Viertel recalls her circle of German émigré intellectuals; Garrett Hongo navigates the complexities of the city's racial patchwork; Tom Wolfe celebrates the sub-culture of custom car aficionados; John McPhee investigates the devastation of Los Angeles mud slides; screenwriter Robert Towne reflects on Chinatown's origin; David Hockney teaches himself to drive; James Ellry delineates the world of hard-bitten homicide cops; Pico Iyer finds at LAX "as clear an image as exists today of the world we are about to enter."

Writing Los Angeles is an incomparable literary tour guide to a city of shifting identities and endless surprises.

Contents:

from Echoes in the city of the angels by Helen Hunt Jackson
The land by Mary Austin
from The rules of the game by Stewart Edward White
from Sixty years in Southern California, 1853-1913 by Harris Newmark
California and America by Vachel Lindsay
from Laughing in the jungle by Louis Adamic
Los Angeles. A rhapsody by Aldous Huxley
Sister Aimee by H.L. Mencken
from Oil! by Upton Sinclair
from Queer people by Carroll and Garrett Graham
from God sends Sunday by Arna Bontemps
The City of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels by Edmund Wilson
Paradise by James M. Cain
Golden land by William Faulkner
Pacific village ; A thing shared by M.F.K. Fisher
from Promised land by Cedric Belfrage
Red wind by Raymond Chandlerfrom Ask the dust by John Fante
from The day of the locust by Nathanael West
from Diaries by Christopher Isherwood
Last kiss by F. Scott Fitzgerald
from Autobiography : Hollywood by Charles Reznikoff
A table at Ciro's by Budd Schulberg
Landscape of exile ; Hollywood elegies ; Californian autumn ; The democratic judge ; The fishing-tackle ; Garden in progress ; from Journals by Bertolt Brecht
from If he hollers let him go by Chester Himesfrom America is in the heart by Carlos Bulosan
from Southern California country : an island on the land ; from North from Mexico by Carey McWilliams
from America day by day by Simone de Beauvoir
Hollywood by Truman Capote
Death in Hollywood by Evelyn Waugh
from The labyrinth of solitude by Octavio Paz
The pedestrian by Ray Bradbury
The mattress by the tomato patch by Tennessee Williams
from The barbarous coast by Ross Macdonald
from On the road by Jack Kerouac
from "Ocian in view" by Lawrence Clark Powell
The slide area by Gavin Lambert
from Slum by the sea by Lawrence Lipton
from Superman comes to the supermarket by Norman Mailer
The lost world by Randall Jarrell
The kandy-kolored tangerine-flake streamline baby by Tom Wolfe
Goodbye surfing, hello God! by Jules Siegel
Los Angeles notebook ; The Getty ; Quiet days in Malibu ; Fire season by Joan Didion
waiting ; betting on now ; The death of my father by Charles Bukowski
from The kindness of strangers by Salka Viertel
from Los Angeles : the architecture of four ecologies by Reyner Banham
from Beneath the underdog by Charles Mingus
from Bike riding in Los Angeles by Marc Norman
Autopia by Cees Nooteboom
The city of robots by Umberto Eco
from David Hockney by David Hockney by David Hockney
Los Angeles : the know-how city by Jan Morris
from The sexual outlaw by John Rechy
Eureka! by John Gregory Dunne
from Straight life by Art Pepper
from Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees ; L.A. glows by Lawrence Weschler
Preface and postscript to Chinatown by Robert Towne
August, Los Angeles, lullaby by Carol Muske
Angel baby blues by Wanda Coleman
from Anywhere but here by Mona Simpson
Night song of the Los Angeles basin by Gary Snyder
from Golden days by Carolyn See
from I was looking for a street by Charles Willeford
Going up in L.A. by Ruben Martinez
from The control of nature by John McPhee
from City of quartz by Mike Davis
City of specters by Lynell George
from Devil in a blue dress by Walter Mosley
Las vistas by Mary Helen Ponce
Coming home to Van Nuys by Sandra Tsing Loh
The tooth of crime by James Ellroy
from Volcano by Garrett Hongo
Where worlds collide by Pico Iyer
Burl's by Bernard Cooper
from The atlas by William T. Vollmann
from Holy land by D.J. Waldie
Beneath Mulholland by David Thomson