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Scott Timberg on Creative Destruction

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Archives for February 2010

Contemporary Classical Music and "Shutter Island"

February 25, 2010 by Scott Timberg

Mostly, Martin Scorserse is associated with rock 'n' roll, especially the early Rolling Stones and Phil Spector. But he's turned out one of the best contemporary-classical soundtracks in history with the music for Shutter Island.A lot of people, some of them licensed film critics, really didn't like Scorsese's new film, which stars Leo Di Caprio investigating a home for the criminally insane swept … [Read more...]

MOCA and Postwar Art

February 23, 2010 by Scott Timberg

NOT long ago I snuck over to the Museum of Contemporary Art for the exhibit of its permanent collection. Am I crazy, or is this - dedicated to the years from 1940 to '80 -- one of LA's best shows of postwar art in the last few years?The exhibit, of course, comes at a time when MOCA has just survived a major financial crisis that led to the resignation of its longtime director. Now, in the period … [Read more...]

Cool New California Novel

February 19, 2010 by Scott Timberg

A fine new book with a perfect-pitch Southern California setting, has just dropped: Model Home, which starts out in an  '80s gated community, is the first novel by  Eric Puchner, whose Music Through the Floor provoked Charles Baxter to call it "the most auspicious debut of a short story collection that I have encountered in years." Model Home looks at a family that's driven by golden dreams, but … [Read more...]

Vancouver and The Future of William Gibson

February 18, 2010 by Scott Timberg

I SEEM to be hearing a lot about Vancouver these days. Not sure why, but it reminds me of my one trip to that glorious city to interview visionary novelist William Gibson. The writer often credited with foreseeing the Internet and much of hacker culture, Gibson was about to publish Spook Country, his second novel (after Pattern Recognition) to concentrate on the more-or-less present.Gibson was as … [Read more...]

February 15 and Galileo

February 15, 2010 by Scott Timberg

TODAY is an important day for Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst, composer John Adams, jazzman Henry Threadgill -- and that's just the musicians. Throw in Susan B. Anthony and Galileo, and I think it's about as good a day as there is, especially lodged as it is in the middle of the dreary month of February. (And I insist I am totally unbiased on the matter despite my Feb. 15 birthday.)Galileo was one of my … [Read more...]

Favorite Guitarists, on Reflection

February 12, 2010 by Scott Timberg

Since he is widely considered the finest rock musician on any instrument, it's hard to be surprised that Jimi Hendrix won my guitarists poll quite handily. (Is that sound disgruntled Keith Moon fans smashing things in the background?) But there were some surprises along the way.To review, this poll asked people for their favorites -- a house- burning-down grab, not the most important historically … [Read more...]

Roberto Bolano’s Eternal Life

February 9, 2010 by Scott Timberg

Given the perilous state of publishing these days, it makes my heart sing whenever a writer of substance generates a serious following. And I keep bumping into people who feel passionate about the Latin American writer Roberto Bolano, who died near Barcelona in 2003. He's in the news these days for the publication of a slender sort-of-mystery novel called Monsieur Pain, but he has not stopped … [Read more...]

Death — and New Life — for Philip K. Dick

February 8, 2010 by Scott Timberg

IT seems appropriate for a writer who was fascinated by religion for much of his career that Philip K. Dick's own trajectory tracks that of many a religious messiah: He died in 1982, but in the years after his death he has seemed to rise again.HERE is the last of six pieces in the Hero Complex blog about the author's decade in Orange County. It looks at his final years, his death, and the movie … [Read more...]

Martin Scorsese vs. "Shutter Island"

February 5, 2010 by Scott Timberg

THIS winter in LA it has been raining, as we used to say in high school, like a mofo, and every times the heavens open I think of the upcoming Martin Scorsese film, Shutter Island. The film, which opens on Friday the 19th, is based on a novel by Dennis Lehane that is so gripping, so full of twists and turns, that it almost ruined a vacation last summer since I kept retreating to the basement to … [Read more...]

Philip K. Dick’s Late Work

February 4, 2010 by Scott Timberg

MY latest piece on Philip K. Dick is the only one built of all-new material: That is, none of this appears in the LA Times story about the writer's Orange County years that ran a couple of Sundays back.This latest piece, which just went up on the Hero Complex blog, looks at the impact Southern California had on Dick's work. Did it move him toward an interest in consumerism, religion, or change his … [Read more...]

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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