Sex, Death and God in L.A. - Softcover

Reid, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520086406 ISBN 13: 9780520086401

Publisher: University of California Press, 1994

Synopsis

David Reid has gathered together the novelists, journalists, and cultural critics who could best address the myths, define the truths, and interpret the media images of the second largest city in the U.S. They report on the new Latino and Asian populations of South Central and the East Side and the old establishment of the West side; Downtown with its heavily mortgaged office towers held by Canadian and Japanese landlords; shuttered factories and thriving sweatshops; architecture from Irving Gill to Frank O. Gehry; messiahs from Krishnamurti to L. Ron Hubbard; rituals of power in Movieland and yoga and seduction in Beverly Hills. Ranging from acute political commentary to evocative literary impressions, this is a collection that will engage not only those who live in southern California but all those curious about this megalopolis in the desert.

About this title

About the Author

David Reid is a writer living in Berkeley who grew up in southern California and was educated at Claremont-McKenna College and the University of California, Berkeley. He is co-editor, with Leonard Michaels and Raquel Scherr, of West of the West: Imagining California (1991).

From the Back Cover

Los Angeles is the labyrinth at the end of the American Dream, a city often celebrated, often condemned--rarely understood. In this fascinating and unusual collection David Reid has gathered together the novelists, journalists, and cultural critics who could best debunk the myths, define the truths, and decipher the strange iconography of this "bronzed paradise" of fourteen million inhabitants. Here are reports and reflections on: the new Latin-American and Asian populations of South Central and the East Side and the old establishment in the West Side's hidden hilltop enclaves; Downtown with its heavily mortgaged office towers held by Canadian and Japanese landlords; the shuttered factories, thriving sweatshops, and gerrymandered "rotten boroughs" of post-industrial L.A.; architecture from Irving Gill to Frank O. Gehry; avatars and messiahs from Krishnamurti to L. Ron Hubbard; rituals of power and abjection in Movieland; and yoga and lust in Beverly Hills. Los Angeles Times and Nation columnist Alexander Cockburn; Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz; L.A. Weekly writers Lynell George and Ruben Martinez; novelists Carolyn See, Eve Babitz, and David Thomson; architectural historian Thomas S. Hines; and Academy Award-winning screenwriter Jeremy Larner are among those who investigate the mysteries of the city which, as Cockburn writes, is "the only megalopolis of the First World growing at a rate comparable to those supercities--Sao Paulo, Cairo, and Canton--of the Third World".

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520086406
• ISBN 13: 9780520086401
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 404