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Scott Timberg on Creative Destruction

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Archives for November 2009

"LA Confidential" in Mexico

November 30, 2009 by Scott Timberg

THE Misread City just landed in Guadalajara, where an enormous book festival will pack in 500,000 or so by week's end.Tonight I took in a panel on one of the best movies ever made about Los Angeles -- "LA Confidential." Actually, it was just die-hard Angeleno David Kipen interviewing the film's director, Curtis Hanson, but the conversation was quite revealing.Hanson talked about his fight with … [Read more...]

Viva Gustavo

November 29, 2009 by Scott Timberg

FRIDAY night I was lucky enough to take in the concert Gustavo Dudamel conducted as part of the LA Philharmonic's "West Coast, Left Coast" festival. (The concert was repeated Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.)I say lucky because not only were we seeing the nation's most exciting young conductor -- albeit one born, raised, and trained in Venezuela -- but a program that made the case, if it still … [Read more...]

The Misread City Goes to Mexico

November 25, 2009 by Scott Timberg

NEXT week I will visit Mexico for the Guadalajara International Book Fair -- the biggest event of its kind in the Americas, second in size only to Frankfurt, and this year dedicated to the writing of Los Angeles. I was invited to moderate two panels partly because I co-edited a book on literary LA, and am in the process of renaming this blog for the book: The Misread City. (You can now get to the … [Read more...]

The West Coast vs. Classical Music

November 24, 2009 by Scott Timberg

ON Saturday night I took in an intriguing if imperfect concert at Disney Hall that involved Kronos Quartet, electronica duo Matmos, rocker Mike Einziger and minimalist pioneer Terry Riley. The evening -- with the coolest crowd I've ever seen at Disney Hall -- was the kickoff to the Phil's "West Coast, Left Coast" festival, which runs for the next several weeks. (Review of show here.)The festival, … [Read more...]

The Birth (and Death) of the Cool

November 23, 2009 by Scott Timberg

NOT long ago, I attended a lively discussion at LA's Book Soup about the origins and demise of cool. Ted Gioia, the author of "West Coast Jazz" and "Delta Blues," was talking about a seismic, beneath-the-surface cultural shift. The cool detachment --sometimes spiked with irony or cryptic gestures -- originated by Bix Beiderbecke, Lester Young and Miles Davis is reaching its sell-by date. How can … [Read more...]

Riding West With Cormac McCarthy

November 20, 2009 by Scott Timberg

ONE of the least likely success stories in recent years is the rise of Cormac McCarthy -- the reclusive, thesaurus-clutching author of unfashionable, hyper-violent Southern Gothic, who became the equally reclusive author of unfashionable Western novels of cowboy-myth. But with "All the Pretty Horses," McCarthy became a literary superstar, with the critical and cinematic success of "No Country For … [Read more...]

"Passion is No Ordinary Word"

November 18, 2009 by Scott Timberg

I'M kind of giddy to note that this week marks the birthday of British "Angry Young Man" Graham Parker. Parker broke about the same time as Elvis Costello, bringing with him righteous anger, a voice that resembled Van Morrison and perhaps American R&B, and a musical traditionalism grounded in The Band and other US models. Though he never hit as hard as Elvis or even Joe Jackson -- those glasses … [Read more...]

The Twilight of the ’80s with Richard Rushfield

November 17, 2009 by Scott Timberg

FOR years before I met him, I knew of Richard Rushfield as this dark legend -- a nihilist wit who ran an underground humor magazine, an online savant with a Nixonian five-o' clock-shadow who had come into the LA Times to destroy the print world from within. When I finally met Rushfield, at an art opening a few months back, I found him oddly innocent and charmingly bewildered, and I'm pleased to … [Read more...]

"The Naked Pint"

November 12, 2009 by Scott Timberg

AFTER years as a wine drinker, I've begun to reorient slightly back to beer -- I think this is happening to a lot of people, especially in LA. so I was delighted to come across the new book, "The Naked Pint: An Unadulterated Guide to Craft Beer." Author Christine Perozzi is a celebrated beer sommelier who founded beerforchicks.com and Hallie Beune helped manage Father's Office and taught at the … [Read more...]

Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles

November 11, 2009 by Scott Timberg

BOOKS on chandler's LA have become a kind of cottage industry. still, i'm enjoying a new book of photographs called "daylight noir: raymond chandler's imagined city." the book could be a companion volume to judith freeman's "the long embrace," which visited the dozens of SoCal locations in which the novelist lived with his elusive wife cissy, tho the aesthetic of "daylight noir" is starker and … [Read more...]

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Scott Timberg

I'm a longtime culture writer and editor based in Los Angeles; my book "CULTURE CRASH: The Killing of the Creative Class" came out in 2015. My stories have appeared in The New York Times, Salon and Los Angeles magazine, and I was an LA Times staff writer for six years. I'm also an enthusiastic if middling jazz and indie-rock guitarist. (Photo by Sara Scribner) Read More…

Culture Crash, the Book

My book came out in 2015, and won the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award. The New Yorker called it "a quietly radical rethinking of the very nature of art in modern life"

I urge you to buy it at your favorite independent bookstore or order it from Portland's Powell's.

Culture Crash

Here is some information on my book, which Yale University Press published in 2015. (Buy it from Powell's, here.) Some advance praise: With coolness and equanimity, Scott Timberg tells what in less-skilled hands could have been an overwrought horror story: the end of culture as we have known … [Read More...]

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