This blog has drifted into Africa and Italy recently, so let me return for a moment to our West Coast home ground: Today would be the birthday of one of America's most intriguing, frustrating and brilliant writers -- Philip K. Dick.It's hard to know where to start on a figure like this, but let me defer to David Gill, a Bay Area lecturer who runs the clever and instructive Total Dick-head site. … [Read more...]
Chinua Achebe, Past and Present
PERHAPS the most consistently engaging critics of new books these days, the New York Times' Dwight Garner, has a fine piece today on the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, author of colonialism classic "Things Fall Apart." Achebe's new collection of essays -- his first book of any kind in two decades -- is called "The Education of a British Protected Child."In the new collection, which I've not seen … [Read more...]
Berlusconi and Italy’s Dark Heart
IN the "couldn't happen to a nicer guy" department comes the recent attack on Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi in Milan. The attack broke two teeth and fractured the media mogul's nose.Italy and its culture are very close to my heart, but this nation does not have a very good track record when it comes to governing itself. And for all the soaring wonders of Italian art, literature and … [Read more...]
"Repo Man" and Punk LA
NOT long ago the LA Times put together a Sunday package on the best films about Los Angeles. I was lucky enough to draw "Repo Man," a movie I watched so many times, with two different posses of high school friends, that the film's dialogue became a kind of subcultural code.The film is being screened tonight at New York's Lincoln Center, in an honor we would not have expected as we shouted lines … [Read more...]
Los Angeles vs. the Gastropub
We seem to be in the grip of a full-scale beer renaissance here in LA. It's taken a while to get here -- as beer expert Hallie Beaune has pointed out, Southern California's proximity to wine country and the (often mistaken) impression that beer has more calories than cocktails or wine has held back beer's progress in this slimness-obsessed town. (Even as a wine-lover, I cannot help but think that … [Read more...]
Ross MacDonald and California
Sometimes it's the outsiders who tell us the most. And Ross Macdonald, the Canadian-reared detective novelist who spent most of his career in and around Santa Barbara, wrote some of the most enduring private eye novels set in the Golden State as well as, between the lines, some of the best social history of the postwar period.HERE is my piece on the work and life of MacDonald (1915-'83), who would … [Read more...]
The Return of Morrissey
Thursday night, Morrissey returns to LA for a show at the Gibson Amphitheater, and he just dropped a new collection of B-sides called "Swords" (including a short disc of songs from a Warsaw concert.) When Mozz played Coachella in the spring I wrote about the man and his influence HERE.I am such a hardcore Smiths fan I ventured to the band's hometown -- Manchester -- and wrote this travel piece … [Read more...]
John Lennon vs. High Culture
Twenty nine years ago, on a cold December morning, I woke up to see my mom, a bit addled, standing in my bedroom doorway. "I've got some bad news," she said. "John Lennon was shot.""Well, is he okay?" I asked.I was in 6th grade, and I'd spent much of the previous few years sitting in the basement while my head spun along with the turntable to the Beatles music -- especially "Revolver" and an album … [Read more...]
Hometown Pasadena and Eat LA
Tonight is a party for the new edition of "Eat LA," a sharp and useful guide to food and drink in greater LA put out by Pasadena's Prospect Park Books. I especially like the way this book stretches from traditional restaurants into bars, bakeries, taquerias and neighborhood joints.I first met the publisher and main author of that book, Colleen Dunn Bates, when she was putting out "Hometown … [Read more...]
Thomas Pynchon as LA Writer
ONE of the highlights of the Guadalajara International Book Festival -- devoted this year to the literature of Los Angeles -- was a panel considering Thomas Pynchon's California Trilogy. This means "The Crying of Lot 49," his shortest and perhaps finest novel; "Vineland," set largely in Mendocino County and perhaps his slightest work; and "Inherent Vice," a neo-noir set in the South Bay at the end … [Read more...]