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Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology

Over 100 years of the best writing about America’s provocative city of dreams More

“The brilliance of this anthology is in the editor’s determination to showcase as many facets of L.A. as possible, warts, beauty marks, and all. In nearly 900 pages, editor Ulin presents excerpts from novels and short stories, poems, diary entries, and newspaper and magazine articles. . . . A stunning collection and a wonderful addition to the Library of America.”—Booklist (starred review)

Overview
News & Views
Table of Contents
Contributors

Overview

Story of the Week Aldous Huxley, “Los Angeles. A Rhapsody.”
July 26, 2022

News In memoriam: Joan Didion, 1934–2021
January 14, 2022

Interviews David L. Ulin on the early Joan Didion: Dread, disruption, and “a writer responding to her moment”
January 4, 2022

For writers 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.” Where Jack Kerouac found a “huge desert encampment,” David Thompson imagined “Marilyn Monroe, fifty miles long, lying on her side, half-buried on a ridge of crumbling rock.”

In Writing Los Angeles, The Library of America presents a glittering panorama of the city, encompassing fiction, poetry, essays, journalism, and diaries by over seventy writers. This revelatory anthology brings to life the entrancing surfaces and unsettling contradictions of The City of Angels, from Raymond Chandler’s evocation of the 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’s cultural and social history, from the oil boom of the 1920s to the graffiti artists of the 1980s, from flamboyant evangelist Aimee Semple MacPherson to surf music genius Brian Wilson, from the German emigre intellectuals chronicled by Salka Viertel to the hard-bitten homicide cops tracked by James Ellroy. Here are its fragile ecosystems, its architectural splendors, and its social chasms, in the words of writers as various as M.F.K. Fisher, William Faulkner, Bertolt Brecht, Evelyn Waugh, Octavio Paz, Joan Didion, Walter Mosley, and Mona Simpson.

Art Pepper discovers Central Avenue in the heyday of the 1940s jazz scene; Charles Mingus describes an early encounter with the builder of the Watts Towers; screenwriter Robert Towne reflects on the origins of Chinatown, and John McPhee powerfully conveys the devastation of Los Angeles mud slides; David Hockney teaches himself how to drive in record time; and Pico Iyer finds at Los Angeles International Airport “as clear an image as exists today of the world we are about to enter.”

Writing Los Angeles is an incomparable literary tour guide to a city of shifting identities and endless surprises.

David L. Ulin, editor, is a frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times , the LA Weekly, and other publications. He recently published Another City, an anthology of contemporary Los Angeles writers.

This special hardcover publication features acid-free paper and a unique design with specifications differing from those of Library of America series titles.
News & Views

Story of the Week Aldous Huxley, “Los Angeles. A Rhapsody.”
July 26, 2022

News In memoriam: Joan Didion, 1934–2021
January 14, 2022

Interviews David L. Ulin on the early Joan Didion: Dread, disruption, and “a writer responding to her moment”
January 4, 2022

Video Joan Didion: The Art of Storytelling
December 23, 2021

Story of the Week Helen Hunt Jackson, “Echoes in the City of the Angels”
September 17, 2021
Table of Contents

Introduction by David L. Ulin

Helen Hunt Jackson | from Echoes in the City of the Angels
Mary Austin | The Land
Stewart Edward White | from The Rules of the Game
Harris Newmark | from Sixty Years in Southern California 1853-1913
Vachel Lindsay | California and America
Louis Adamic | from Laughing in the Jungle
Aldous Huxley | Los Angeles. A Rhapsody
H. L. Mencken | Sister Aimýýe
Upton Sinclair | from Oil!
Carroll & Garrett Graham | from Queer People
Arna Bontemps | from God Sends Sunday
Edmund Wilson | The City of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels
James M. Cain | Paradise
William Faulkner | Golden Land
M.F.K. Fisher | Pacific Village | A Thing Shared
Cedric Belfrage | from Promised Land
Raymond Chandler | Red Wind
John Fante | from Ask the Dust
Nathanael West | from The Day of the Locust
Christopher Isherwood | from Diaries
F. Scott Fitzgerald | Last Kiss
Charles Reznikoff | from Autobiography: Hollywood
Budd Schulberg | A Table at Ciro’s
Bertolt Brecht | Landscape of Exile | Hollywood Elegies | Californian Autumn | The Democratic Judge | The Fishing-Tackle | Garden In Progress | from Journals
Chester Himes | from If He Hollers Let Him Go
Carlos Bulosan | from America Is in the Heart
Carey McWilliams | from Southern California Country: An Island on the Land | from North from Mexico: Blood on the Pavements
Simone de Beauvoir | from America Day by Day
Truman Capote | Hollywood
Evelyn Waugh | Death in Hollywood
Octavio Paz | from The Labyrinth of Solitude
Ray Bradbury | The Pedestrian
Tennessee Williams | The Mattress by the Tomato Patch
Ross Macdonald | from The Barbarous Coast
Jack Kerouac | from On the Road
Lawrence Clark Powell | from Ocian in View
Gavin Lambert | The Slide Area
Lawrence Lipton | from Slum by the Sea
Norman Mailer | from Superman Comes to the Supermarket
Randall Jarrell | The Lost World
Tom Wolfe | The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby
Jules Siegel | Goodbye Surfing, Hello God!
Joan Didion | Los Angeles Notebook | The Getty | Quiet Days in Malibu | Fire Season
Charles Bukowski | waiting | betting on now | The Death of the Father
Salka Viertel | from The Kindness of Strangers
Reyner Banham | from Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies
Charles Mingus | from Beneath the Underdog
Marc Norman | from Bike Riding in Los Angeles
Cees Nooteboom | Autopia
Umberto Eco | The City of Robots
David Hockney | from David Hockney by David Hockney
Jan Morris | Los Angeles: The Know-How City
John Rechy | from The Sexual Outlaw
John Gregory Dunne | Eureka!
Art Pepper | from Straight Life
Lawrence Weschler | from Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees | L.A. Glows
Robert Towne | Preface and Postscript to Chinatown
Carol Muske | August, Los Angeles, Lullaby
Wanda Coleman | Angel Baby Blues
Mona Simpson | from Anywhere But Here
Gary Snyder | Night Song of the Los Angeles Basin
Carolyn See | from Golden Days
Charles Willeford | from I Was Looking for a Street
Rubén Martínez | Going Up in L.A.
John McPhee | from The Control of Nature
Mike Davis | from City of Quartz
Lynell George | City of Specters
Walter Mosley | from Devil in a Blue Dress
Mary Helen Ponce | Las Vistas
Sandra Tsing Loh | Coming Home to Van Nuys
James Ellroy | The Tooth of Crime
Garrett Hongo | from Volcano
Pico Iyer | Where Worlds Collide
Bernard Cooper | Burl’s
William T. Vollmann | from The Atlas
D. J. Waldie | from Holy Land
David Thomson | Beneath Mulholland
Contributors

Louis Adamic
Mary Austin
Reyner Banham
Simone de Beauvoir
Cedric Belfrage
Arna Bontemps
Ray Bradbury
Bertolt Brecht
Charles Bukowski
Carlos Bulosan
James M. Cain
Truman Capote
Raymond Chandler
Wanda Coleman
Bernard Cooper
Mike Davis
Joan Didion
John Gregory Dunne
Umberto Eco
James Ellroy
John Fante
William Faulkner
M.F.K. Fisher
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Lynell George
Carroll & Garrett Graham
Chester Himes
David Hockney
Garrett Hongo
Aldous Huxley
Christopher Isherwood
Pico Iyer
Helen Hunt Jackson
Randall Jarrell
Jack Kerouac
Gavin Lambert
Vachel Lindsay
Lawrence Lipton
Sandra Tsing Loh
Norman Mailer
Ross Macdonald
Rubén Martínez
John McPhee
Carey McWilliams
H. L. Mencken
Charles Mingus
Jan Morris
Walter Mosley
Carol Muske
Harris Newmark
Cees Nooteboom
Marc Norman
Octavio Paz
Art Pepper
Mary Helen Ponce
Lawrence Clark Powell
John Rechy
Charles Reznikoff
Budd Schulberg
Carolyn See
Jules Siegel
Mona Simpson
Upton Sinclair
Gary Snyder
David Thomson
Robert Towne
Salka Viertel
William T. Vollmann
D. J. Waldie
Evelyn Waugh
Lawrence Weschler
Nathanael West
Stewart Edward White
Charles Willeford
Tennessee Williams
Edmund Wilson
Tom Wolfe

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ISBN: 978-1-931082-27-3 880 pages

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