Los Angeles' literary landscape

[Paul Mackin]

On May 2, 2006, at 9:36 PM, kent mueller wrote:

> I'm trying to recall if Bukowski was born in LA or not. He's another
> California landscape, sort of The Nickel/Fifth in downtown LA. I  
> read that
> LA's skid row is 30 blocks square, this is amazing, since most  
> cities have
> lost their skid-rows in the last 30 years or so. They made it sound  
> like one
> huge open air drug market...
>
> Kent Mueller


He grew up there, went to school there.

LA. has many of everything including skid rows. Maybe if you added  
them all
up it would come to 50 square blocks.  The downtown one, portrayed in  
"Barfly."
was still there the last I heard. South Main Street and environs.
The Follies burlesque theatre was there back a long time ago. Pershing
Square--around where the city started--was fairly skid row-ish.

My information is hopelessly out of date.


>
>
>> From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net>
>> Date: Mon, 01 May 2006 11:46:57 -0400
>> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>> Subject: Re: Los Angeles' literary landscape
>>
>> A kind of interesting thing about the fiction entries is that, of the
>> authors'  names' I recognized, no one  was originally from the L.A
>> area.  Joan Didion was from California, but up north in Sacramento.
>>
>> I wonder if it might be necessary to be from somewhere else to fully
>> sense the by-now widely perceived "strangeness" of the place.
>>
>> On May 1, 2006, at 10:49 AM, Dave Monroe wrote:
>>
>>> Los Angeles' literary landscape
>>>
>>> By Thomas Curwen and David L. Ulin, Times Staff
>>> Writers
>>>
>>> In "Ramona," her 1884 novel of Southern California,
>>> Helen Hunt Jackson did more than tell the story of the
>>> illicit romance between a mestizo orphan and an Indian
>>> sheepherder. Caught in the pages of her famous
>>> melodrama is a picture of the land that is perhaps
>>> more timeless than the tale itself.
>>>
>>> [...]
>>>
>>> Writers since Jackson have consciously — or
>>> unconsciously — tumbled to similar truths. Whether the
>>> backdrop is bucolic or sprawling, nostalgic or
>>> postmodern, the drama of Southern California is often
>>> caught up in the topography or the development of this
>>> urban environment. Fiction writers portray it,
>>> nonfictions writers explain it, and between the two is
>>> a rich body of literature.
>>>
>>> No list of these books is complete, but these 20
>>> titles are a good starting point.
>>>
>>> [...]
>>>
>>> Fiction
>>>
>>> [...]
>>>
>>> The Crying of Lot 49
>>>
>>> By Thomas Pynchon
>>>
>>> When Oedipa Maas first beholds San Narcisco, a vast
>>> sprawl of houses somewhere near L.A., it is all
>>> dystopia sheathed in smog — and ripe for a conspiracy
>>> as dark as any Jacobean tragedy But what matters most
>>> is that Pynchon in a little more than 100 pages
>>> captures a topography straight out of our local past.
>>> The high jinks at Yoyodyne, the cavorting at Echo
>>> Courts, and the pink glow of the sky at night — we
>>> fail to recognize this world at our own risk.
>>>
>>> [...]
>>>
>>> http://www.calendarlive.com/galleriesandmuseums/cl-
>>> re-125books30apr30,0,6783777.story?coll=cl-art
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>