Pomona-Mike Davis-Journey Into the Mind of Watts

[Derek Barker]

At 03:56 PM 1/21/99 -0800, you wrote:
>At 3:31 PM -0800 1/21/99, Derek Barker wrote:
>
>
>>as a former resident of the area, i would have to agree that san narciso
>>does bear an uncanny resemblence to the "inland empire" area of southern
>>california - it's very much the dysfunctional web of highways and minimalls
>>described in Lot 49.
>
>For an interesting albeit brief take on Pynchon's Southern Cal, check out
>Mike Davis' _City of Quartz_.  The first chapter is where it is--no need to
>wade through the whole thing.
>

Yes!  City of Quartz is great, and Davis's new one (Ecology of Fear)
isn't bad either.  

But I disagree - all of City of Quartz is worth reading, especially
"Fortress L.A.," 
though you're right, Pynchon is only mentioned directly in that one chapter
which 
links him to Ornette Coleman and Richard Steinholz, among others, as the
avante-garde
flipside of L.A. politics...

But the Fortress L.A. essay, without directly mentioning Pynchon, goes right
to the architecture of paranoia which Pynchon takes on in Lot 49.

Spencer, if you like Davis on L.A., Pynchon has an incredible essay on L.A.
in a somewhat similiar vein (one of his few non-fiction pieces) called "A
Journey
Into the Mind of Watts" - definitely worth checking out if you haven't
already.

D.B.