LAST night the Hammer Museum held an event about Isherwood's years in LA that included his companion Don Bachardy and and journalist David Kipen. Connection problems keep me from filling this out further, but HERE is the piece I wrote on the British author's years in California, which included a visit to his old house in the Palisades. The story begins: He abandoned a … [Read more...]
Salman Rushdie in Los Angeles
ONE of my best experiences as a books/authors reporter was spending most of a day wandering around LA with Salman Rushdie. We discussed his longtime interest in film while strolling through his old neighborhood in West Hollywood, talked about the Beatles and the English '60s over iced coffees at the Kings Road Cafe, and got into his years in hiding while having lunch nearby.Rushdie is in town … [Read more...]
Philip K. Dick in Marin Co.
RECENTLY your humble blogger ventured to Point Reyes Station, a beautiful little town on the Marin Coast, where Philip K. Dick spent several reclusive and very productive years. They were also perhaps his greatest period, during which he wrote The Man in the High Castle and began The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich.The result is this New York Times story, which runs Tuesday and looks at a … [Read more...]
The Past Envisions the Future
LOOKING back at mid-century optimism is always both fascinating and depressing. All the labor-saving devices and exotic holidays -- weekends on the moon! -- we were going to get by now.The science-fiction writer Gregory Benford, who teaches at UC/Irvine, and the editors of Popular Mechanics have put together hundreds of these predictions, from asbestos dresses to personal jetpacks, along with the … [Read more...]
Los Angeles Noir Comes to Glendale
LOCAL culture vultures know Denise Hamilton for her work as a journalist and mystery writer. She's also edited two anthologies of crime fiction, Los Angeles Noir and its sequel, for Akashic Press.The city of Glendale has just chosen the first book, made up mostly of new writing, as part of its One City/ One Book program. (The book includes pieces by Gary Phillips, Naomi Hirahawa, Michael Connelly, … [Read more...]
Stieg Larsson’s "Girl"
THE international explosion of the Millennium trilogy -- which begins with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo -- remains baffling even to those who know and love the books. In fact, even Sonny Mehta, the Knopf head who brought the books to the States, considers their popularity a happy enigma.HERE is my piece in today's LA Times about the books and their world takeover. (The story is timed to … [Read more...]
Announcing Postmodern Mystery
HERE at The Misread City we’re longtime fans of Ted Gioia, whose book West Coast Jazz recreated the worlds of Dexter Gordon, Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck and others, reframing the way we looked at postwar California music.Ted, who also writes on the blues and runs the blog Conceptual Fiction, which looks at the intersection of literature with fantasy and science fiction, has just launched Postmodern … [Read more...]
"Common as Air"
THE scholar and poet Lewis Hyde is a fascinating figure whose ideas about the unease of art in a market economy have developed him a cult following that includes figures like Zadie Smith, Michael Chabon and artist Bill Viola. (David Foster Wallace was also a big fan.)Hyde's most famous and influential book -- with the possible exception of Tricker Makes the World -- is The Gift: Creativity and the … [Read more...]
The New Yorker’s Young West Coast Writers
THE New Yorker recently announced its 20 Under 40 list of American writers, running some of them in their summer fiction issue and others since. Two of the bunch – Daniel Alarcon and Yiyun Li – were fairly recent profile subjects of mine, and I’ve enjoyed, without surprise, watching their rise. Both are foreign-born writers who’ve settled in the Bay Area and show the ability – despite nativist … [Read more...]
Jonathan Lethem Comes to California
JONATHAN Lethem is well known to readers of The Misread City one of the most consistently fascinating American novelists. Nearly all the writers we celebrate here are West Coast figures – Dick, Le Guin, Chabon, Chandler, Ross MacDonald – and Lethem has stood out as a kind of token Brooklyner. But Lethem, whose most recent novel was the Upper East Side-set Chronic City, has finally seen the light. … [Read more...]