Sex, death, and God in L.A.
By: edited and with an introduction by David Reid.
Contributors: Reid, David, 1946-
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Pantheon Books
Published: 1992
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 356
Subjects: Los Angeles (Calif.) -- Civilization.
Description: 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."
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 314-318).