Idealised for its sun, glamour and free-minded spirit of possibility, Los Angeles also has a dark side – and it’s fascinating how writers have depicted the contrasts and culture clashes that abound in it. As The New York Times said of Mike Davis’s myth-busting City of Quartz, if this is hell, why is it so popular? Last week, Kate Gale blogged about some of the essential literary works set in LA, and our readers had a lot to add. Here are some of their recommendations:
1. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles by Mike Davis (1990)
Davis deconstructs the forces that shaped modern LA through history, from the ruins of a socialist 1914 community to the influence of real estate developers, journalists, noir writers or second world war exiles, among many other groups [the book’s latest editions are updated to include events from the 1990s]. It was overwhelmingly recommended by our readers. Elagabal said:
City of Quartz is a fantastic and infuriating read, a brutal and lively account of a city and its endless suburbs produced by real estate speculation and conflicts between elites. Although he updated it to take the story up to the riots of the early 90s, there isn’t yet an edition bringing the story up to the present day, unfortunately (as far as I know). A shame, as the city and its surroundings have continued to undergone massive changes, and to be sclerotic and scintillating at the same time: congested freeways, massive real estate price inflation, absurd wealth on one side of the city and deprivation on the other, racial conflict and exhilarating cultural hybridity.
djhurley said:
If you’re talking essential reading for LA, it has to be City of Quartz: it tells the full gritty, sordid story from the early days up through the 1990s. You’ll never look at LA the same way again.
City of Quartz was also recommended by vera456, canukbound, LiamKelly, peninsularguy, Jeremy Simms, Ron Jacobs and cbroc.
2. The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis (1994)
Los Angeles-born Bret Easton Ellis set several of his works in Los Angeles, but two of his books were recommended repeatedly by our readers. stellabaraklianou said of The Informers, a collection of short stories:
LA is inevitably a writer’s “paradise” or haven, as it integrates the necessary stage set ... Half the time it is like living and driving on a set. I was fortunate to live there for a couple of years. When I left, a friend of mine gave me a gift, Bret Easton Ellis’s The Informers – it encapsulated perfectly my memories and thoughts about LA. It comprises of short stories of various persons who are closely and quite loosely connected. Written in distinctive Ellis style it is as putting a knife to the bone, inhumanely precise and true of what most people experience of living in LA, where car culture and massive distances can put a distance to fellow human beings. A must read!
“The Information contains some amusing and nasty portrayals of LA SoCal nihilism. Made into a terrible movie though,” added bigzot. But let’s make this a two-in-one: Ellis’s classic Less Than Zero is another essential LA read – this 1985 novel was a zeitgeisty portrait of the excesses and amorality of the rich and young in the city, and it “totally sums up LA” according to Rua29. It was also recommended by lozinger, MervMoore, and by tallulahsmith and leroyhunter, as was The Informers.
LA in quotes from the books:
Greed is good. Sex is easy. Youth is forever. —The Informers
I come to a red light, tempted to go through it, then stop once I see a billboard sign that I don’t remember seeing and I look up at it. All it says is ‘Disappear Here’ and even though it’s probably an ad for some resort, it still freaks me out a little and I step on the gas really hard and the car screeches as I leave the light. —Less Than Zero
3. My Dark Places by James Ellroy (1996)
James Ellroy’s LA Quartet – comprised of The Black Dhalia, The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential and White Jazz – was amply praised by our readers. My Dark Places, his disturbing autobiographical book about the murder of his own mother, was recommended by bigzot, who said:
Ellroy owns that entire LA noir sub-genre. Not to be underestimated is his autobiographic essay, My Dark Places, which is an unprecedentedly horrific first person narration about growing up in LA’s seamier – and potently dangerous – environs.
lindyloo72 shared:
My Dark Places is disturbing but quite brilliant, and incredibly honest. He’s a legend – but his life could’ve went so many other ways, don’t you think?
About Ellroy’s general gloomy depiction of the city, BookMike said:
I think I’d actually be disappointed if I went to LA and it wasn’t the sweaty, sleazy glamour, floating precariously over and regularly taking a swim in a river of sin that Ellroy paints.
And JongeMatador shared:
Ellroy hands down. His descriptions of LA are so visceral, I half expect to see Dudley Smith appear out of nowhere from an alley.
In quotes from the book:
Dead people belong to the live people who claim them most obsessively.
I wanted to go home. I wanted to see Helen. I wanted to write this memoir. Dead women were holding me back. They died in L.A. and told me to stick around for a while. I was burned out on detective work.
I split L.A. in ‘81. Ir was too familiar and too easy. AA was too easy. I wanted to ditch all the people hooked on therapy and 12-step religion. I knew I could stay sober anywhere. I wanted to blast out of L.A. and limit my L.A. intake to the fictional L.A. in my head.
4. Ask the Dust by John Fante (1939)
This Great Depression-era novel introduced the character of Arturo Bandini, a young Italian-American from Colorado trying to make it as a writer in the city, who is based on Fante himself. LiamKelly traveled to Los Angeles recently and read up lots of novels beforehand, with this one standing out as his favourite “by far”. This interesting Guardian piece explained why, even if the novel is now widely regarded a classic of American literature, it nearly missed greatness. It was also recommended by davidcosta and cbroc.
In quotes from the book:
Ah, Los Angeles! Dust and fog of your lonely streets, I am no longer lonely. Just you wait, all of you ghosts of this room, just you wait, because it will happen, as sure as there’s a God in heaven.
I have wanted women whose very shoes are worth all I have ever possessed.
Come down out of the skies, you God, come on down and I’ll hammer your face all over the city of Los Angeles, you miserable unpardonable prankster. If it wasn’t for you, this woman would not have been so maimed, and neither would the world.
5. The Harry Bosch novels by Michael Connelly
This series of seventeen mysteries, in which homicide detective Harry Bosch investigates all kinds of crimes in the streets of LA, were recommended by many readers. mizdarlin said:
Grew up in LA, have still a love/hate relationship ... For me, no one chronicles the realities (there are so many) of Los Angeles as well as Michael Connelly. Any of his books take me instantly back to those crazy dirty Hollywood streets, those downtown LA tall buildings and silent, staring street characters ... The melting pot that simmered in the hot California sun ...
Nothing like him, before or since, his prose is so evocative I can feel myself sweating when I read his work, even in a brutal Canadian winter.
They were also recommended by MrFabJp, jnatchoz, Lakis Fourouklas, SimonStylites, Papistpal and lindyloo72.
In quotes from the books:
The setting sun burned the sky pink and orange in the same bright hues as surfers’ bathing suits. It was beautiful deception, Bosch thought, as he drove north on the Hollywood Freeway to home. Sunsets did that here. Made you forget it was the smog that made their colors so brilliant, that behind every pretty picture there could be an ugly story. —The Black Echo
6. The Tortilla Curtain by TC Boyle (1995)
The Tortilla Curtain, Boyle’s raging novel about immigrants in contemporary California, received high praise from PatLux as a novel that encapsulates many of contemporary Los Angeles’s troubling contradictions:
It took me months to get it out of my head. Illegal immigrants’ lives intersect with those living in horrible LA gated communities. The tragedy of life in the USA as it is lived by some.
bettybrandenburg said that she reads it years ago and still thinks about it, “at the very least when I’m in LA.” It was also recommended by McSee, mignonnette and ID367007.
In quotes from the book:
There are always surprises. Life may be inveterately grim and the surprises disproportionately unpleasant, but it would be hardly worth living if there were no exceptions, no sunny days, no acts of random kindness.
7. Anything by Ross Macdonald
Ross Macdonald’s books are must-reads for anyone wanting to immerse themselves in LA noir (assuming Raymond Chandler is done and dusted). Macdonald’s mastery of structure and story, as well as his grace, sensitivity and insight, make him unique and, perhaps, even better than Chandler, according to many lovers of the genre and crime novelists. Reader RowenaC said:
Ross Macdonald is my favourite LA noir type writer ... though many of his books are set farther up the coast. The Way Some People Die is a great one and starts out in LA. His prose is just so good, wiry and athletic, it feels like it’s jumping off the page; or like it might be able to give you a black eye.
It was also recommended by bertisg.
In quotes from the books:
Behind the semi-elliptical bar four cowboys who had never been near a cow sang western songs which sounded as if they had originated in the far east. —The Underground Man
8. This Book Will Save Your Life by AM Homes (2006)
This ingenious comic novel about the efforts of a middle-aged divorcee to transform his life mocks wealthy Los Angeles, but that only makes it stronger, according to a New York Times piece which snarkily praises the “Californian talent for turning absurdity into sustenance”: “It’s the sole great city on the planet that treats bitter satires as interesting suggestions and can transform the outrage it inspires into vital cellular nutrition.” According to the Guardian’s review, Homes “captures the enchantment of generosity – that sense of adventure you get when you step out of your own circle of need into someone else’s, and the weird feeling of invulnerability it gives you. It helps, of course, that the book is set in Los Angeles, where practically everything feels like a metaphor.” ID367007 called it “one of the funniest novels I’ve ever read,” and it was also recommended by maccamacmac wahsnailuj.
In quotes from the book:
Driving a Bentley to Target – only in LA does this make sense.
We’re all good when we want to be, otherwise we’re fucking animals. There is no VIP room in reality, and there is no reality in this city. You can’t Google the answers. People talk about being on the ride of your life – THIS IS YOUR LIFE.
9. The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh (1948)
Waugh’s satirical novel about the movie industry, the British expatriate community in Hollywood, the pet funeral business, and the sometimes ridiculous connections between the three was recommended by McSee, CarlRusso and JakeStockwell, who said:
Evelyn Waugh snarls at the hypocrisy and ridiculousness of the American Dream and the Brits who try to maintain the pomp of their diminished homeland. A jolly good film adaptation too (monstrous Mr Joyboy) which is nice for a story that features the movies.
In quotes from the book:
Outside the windows the cars swept past continuously, out of town, into town, lights ablaze, radios at full throttle. “I wither slowly in thine arms,” he read. “Here at the quiet limit of the world,” and repeated to himself: “Here at the quiet limit of the world. Here at the quiet limit of the world”… as a monk will repeat a simple pregnant text, over and over again in prayer.
10. Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon (2009)
Pynchon’s infamous stoner mystery, recently adapted for the big screen by Paul Thomas Anderson, is a completely chaotic and yet perfect portrait of the atmosphere of 70s hippy-friendly Los Angeles. It was recommended by Spike Tea and Ron Jacobs.
In quotes from the book:
This seemed to be happening more and more lately out in Greater Los Angeles, among gatherings of carefree youth and happy dopers, where Doc had begun to notice older men, there and not there, rigid, unsmiling, that he knew he’d seen before, not the faces necessarily but a defiant posture, an unwillingness to blur out, like everyone else at the psychedelic events of those days, beyond official envelopes of skin.
It had been dark at the beach for hours, he hadn’t been smoking much and it wasn’t headlights – but before she turned away, he could swear he saw light falling on her face, the orange light just after sunset that catches a face turned to the west, watching the ocean for someone to come in on the last wave of the day, in to shore and safety.
Yet after night fall most any layover here, it seemed that they ended up cruising the bleak arterials of dismal L.A. backwaters, seeking out of some helpless fatality the company of lowlifes of opportunity.
Extra notes
- Part-fiction, part-travelogue, Los Angeles without a Map was mentioned by Jean O’Sullivan, who said it “mirrors my first few months in LA when I lived there in the late 70s. It should really be called “Los Angeles without a Car” which is his experience of the place ...”
- jimlevy recommended Harvey Mudd’s long poem The Plain of Smokes (1982): “A literary but very readable piece in 3 parts. In the first one, William Wordsworth visits contemporary LA from heaven and reports on his experience to his equally dead sister. Predictably, he was appalled.”
Did we miss your favourite? Do add it in the comments. Next up: New Orleans.
