WRITING LOS ANGELES: A Literary Anthology: A Library of America Special Publication

by Ulin, David L. (editor)

$40 · Offered by Biblio

First edition · In dust jacket

New York, New York, U.S.A: Library of America, 2002. 1st Edition 1st Printing. Hardcover. New/New. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Los Angeles has always been a place of paradisal promise and apocalyptic undercurrents. Simone de Beauvoir saw a kaleidoscopic "hall of mirrors," Aldous Huxley a "city of dreadful joy." Jack Kerouac found a "huge desert encampment," David Thomson imagined "Marilyn Monroe, fifty miles long, lying on her side, half-buried on a ridge of crumbling rock." In WRITING LOS ANGELESs, The Library of America presents a glittering panorama in fiction, poetry, essays, journalism, and diaries by more than seventy writers. Beginning with Helen Hunt Jackson's romantic portrayal of the city's early days, the anthology covers a century's worth of Los Angeles writing. It brings to life the entrancing surfaces and unsettling contradictions of The City of Angels, from Raymond Chandler's evocation of murderous moods fed by the Santa Ana winds to John Gregory Dunne's affectionate tribute to "the deceptive perspectives of the pale subtropical light." Here are fascinating strata of Los Angeles history, from the 1920s oil boom and the 1940s Zoot Suit Riots to 1950s beat culture and 1980s graffiti art, from flamboyant evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson to surf music genius Brian Wilson. The pleasures and discontents of the Hollywood movie colony are parsed by such observers as Nathanael West, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Christopher Isherwood. Fragile ecosystems, architectural splend

• Publisher: Library of America
• Year: 2002
• Edition: First Edition
• Printing: first
• Binding: hardcover

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