Name three works of fiction about Los Angeles by three different authors.
or
How many spots do you see?
LA EASTSIDE
Life Beyond The River
Name three works of fiction about Los Angeles by three different authors.
or
How many spots do you see?
1. If He Hollers Let Him Go by Chester B. Himes
2. Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle
3. Revolt of the Cockroach People by Oscar Acosta
Day of the Locust, by Nathanael West
LA Confidential, by James Ellroy
Less Than Zero, by Bret Easton Ellis
The Nowhere City – Alison Lurie
Queer People – Carroll and Garrett Graham
Revolt of the Cockroach People – Oscar Acosta
Molecular Thermodynamics – Paris Hilton
Calculus, Linear And Nonlinear Functions – Kim Kardashian
Spectral Functions in Mathematics and Physics – Kevin Federline
I dig it Edie! Sorry about being long winded but I got carried away while looking up these three LA writers.
“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.â€
RED WIND, Raymond Chandler
while
being
checked into the L.A. City jail (I was still a bit drunk)
there was a crowd of prisoners waiting and
nobody noticed me smoking a cigarette
until some ash dropped off the end
then a cop screamed at me about how
“we kept this fucking place CLEAN!â€
“oh,†I said, and then the cop said,
“wise fucker, huh?…O.K., now you
get it!â€
and he pushed me into a back room and locked the door behind
me.
there behind a thick yellow floor-to-ceiling
wire screen was this total
madman
he saw me and screamed
ran violently toward me
smashed into the wire screen
bounced back
rushed the wire again
grabbing it
shaking it
wanting to get through it
trying to get at me
trying to kill me
it was frightening
but I was drunk
found another cigarette
lit it trembling
pushed it through the wire
expecting to get my hand ripped
off
he took the smoke
put it to his lips
inhaled exhaled
I lit up
also
we stood there together
smoking.
that’s the way the cop
found us
when he opened the door
behind
me.
“son of a bitch,†he said, “that’s
beautiful, I wish I could let
you go for that,â€
“I wish you could too,â€
I told him.
“come on , “he
said.
as we walked out the door
the madman grabbed the wire again and
screamed
screamed
screamed
he rattled and banged the,
wire
that thick wire
with the yellow paint flaking off
revealing the
pale grey paint
underneath.
madman,
BONE PALACE BALLET, Charles Bukowski
A week later Buzz went by the grave, his fourth visit since LASD hustled the kid into the ground. The plot was a low-rent number in an East LA cemetary; the stone read
Daniel Thomas Upshaw
1922-1950
No beloved whatever of.
No son of whoever.
No Crucifix cut into the tablet and no RIP.
Nothing juicy to catch a passerby’s interest, like “Cop Killer†or Almost DA’s Bureau Brass.†Nothing to spell it out true to whoever read the half-column hush job on the kid’s accidental death-a slip off a chair, a nose dive onto a kitchen cutlery rack.
Fall Guy.
THE BIG NOWHERE, James Ellroy
28 spots!
Eulogy for a Brown Angel by Lucha Corpi
Famous All Over Town by Danny Santiago
Concrete River by Luis Rodriguez (it’s a poetry book but oh well!)
John Fante – “Dreams from Bunker Hill”
Frank Fenton – “A Place in the Sun”
Gavin Lambert – “Inside Daisy Clover”
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
(Non-fiction but two other favorites:)
Education of a Felon by Edward Bunker
Black Dahlia Avenger by Steve Hodel
“CIty of Night”- John Rechy
“The Moths and Other Stories”- Helena Viramontes
“Chicana Falsa”- Michelle Serros.
Fiction/Short Stories, multiple settings in the LA-Ventura Region, and elsewhere.
F it,
a 4th one de pilon.
“City of God”- Gil Cuadros, a must read.
Phillip K. Dick – Puttering About in a Small Land
Greg Bear – Queen of Angels
Mike Davis – City of Quartz (isn’t it really hyperbolic fiction, anyways?)
“The Big Sleep”-Raymond Chandler
“The Tortilla Curtain”-T.C. Boyle
“Day of The Locust”-Nathaniel West
Ethnic Stuff:
City Terrace Field Manual – Sesshu Foster (also Atomik Azteks)
Ask the Dust – John Fante
Nerdlandia – Gary Soto
The last one is not really LA-specific, but the cover says it’s set in LA.
Crime Novels:
Devil in a Blue Dress – Walter Mosely (most of the Easy Rawlins books)
The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy
Summer of the Big Bachi – Naomi Hirahara
Many of Gary Phillips books
There’s a lot of good nonfiction. LA’s truth is no stranger or fantastic than the truth anywhere else, which is often stranger and more unbelievable than fiction, but here, it’s written down.
Thanks for the reading list, everyone. I read a book called “Republic of East LA”, by Luis Rodriguez. It’s a collection of short stories. Really good.
I’ve gotta repeat what RobThomas wrote: Thanks for the Great Reading List. My library card is filled for the year. Many thanks to don quixote for the extensive quotes to give us all a little taste of some of these books.
And
chimatli for counting the spots!
Thanks for the reading recommendations! I’d like to add the first book that came to my mind….
“The Road to Los Angeles” by John Fante
My other two selections were already mentioned.