Los Angeles' literary landscape

[Paul Mackin]

On May 2, 2006, at 11:56 PM, David Casseres wrote:

> I used to go to the Follies when I was in high school.  I feel
> privileged to be among the last Americans ever to see genuine
> burlesque.


I went at least once. It was around 1940.  No questions ask of kids.

There was a Pinkie Lee type comedian who I'm tempted to believe
in retrospect might have been the man himself. i know
Lee spent time in Hollywood trying to break into the movies.
Only got small parts but of course eventually hit it big
in kid TV.

>
> On 5/2/06, Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>> 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 My information is hopelessly out of date.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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>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>