Skylight Books Sign in Los Feliz

I’m not one of those Angelinos who will claim that our literary culture rivals that of New York (sorry people, it just doesn’t–we can still love LA and concede secondary status on pizza and publishers). Nonetheless, we do have a pretty vibrant community of writers and readers. I’ve written about Chaparral and What Books Press here before, and I’m always happy to see news of a new journal or press.

On that note, The Rattling Wall is set to launch this month, and the inaugural issue looks delightful with offerings from Albert Reyes, Tony Hoagland, James Frey, and Neal Pollack, among others. They’re having a release party at the Hammer a week from tomorrow. If Hoagland were reading, I’d be there in a heartbeat, but alas he is not. Nonetheless,the slate is full of talent: Joseph Mattson, Michelle Meyering, James Greer, Neal Pollack, Allison Burnett, Stacey Waite, Eloise Klein Healy, Sam Dunn, Matthew Zapruder, Lou Mathews. It should be a great reading.

Photographer Adam Rindy took some amazing portraits of people and their bikes at The Hammer Museum’s Third annual bike night last week. This is a fantastic collection showing the wide variety of Los Angeles cyclists, with many a familiar face to anyone who regularly finds themselves on 2 wheels.

Tonight kicks off the Cinespia’s “Vive L’amour” series, co-sponsored by the Film and TV Office of the French Embassy in Los Angeles, and presented at the Cinefamily (Silent Movie Theater). In tonight’s cinematic bon-bon, Catherine Deneuve stars in Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, the musical story of a sweet, young shop girl and her starcrossed love for a mechanic.

After the movie, a curated selection of vintage scopitones will be screened, and the Frenchie food truck will be on hand serving up appropriate fare, throughout the night . Later in the series Cinespia will screen Beauty and the Beast, Jules and Jim, and Amelie among others. (Some films screen on Saturdays.)

As if that’s not enough, tonight at the Egyptian is a double feature of Goddard’s Contempt and Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player. Formidable!

Finally, on a non-French note, while I’m posting about fantastique cinema, I feel the need to give a shout out to the Aero for their Valentine’s Day weekend schedule: Gone With the Wind Saturday the 12th, Casablanca and Double Indemnity the 13th, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s on Valentine’s Day itself. That is one inspired line-up, Aero.

Thank you, L.A., for being so cinematically awesome. J’taime.

Richard Alexander Caraballo's photo used through Creative Commons

When I conjure the list of people I believe epitomize L.A. in some sense, Jonathan Gold and Bret Easton Ellis are both on that list, but together? Talking?  I admit I hadn’t really considered that. When I saw that the Hammer has them in conversation this Tuesday (tomorrow), I just had to pass it along to you all. I myself am busy or I’d go just because I love L.A., and Gold and Ellis are utterly paradigmatic of the city, each in his own way.

Can you imagine the conversation?

JG: You know, that story about kids snorting coke all night and prostituting themselves reminds me of this amazing coq au vin I had at this little French place on the Westside last month.

BEE: Speaking of cock, let me tell you about the novel I’m working on now…

Seriously, it’s bound to be a great night. (It’s like the sequel to Hank Moody’s stolen novel; this one’s called Fucking and Lunching.) 

Plus, the Hammer events are free, and there’s cheap parking ($3) right underneath the building. If only the gelato place up the street, Piccomolo, hadn’t closed it would be like a perfect evening. Have fun b.la-ers. Let me know how it is.

Vilhelm Pedersen's "Emperor's New Clothes" is in the public domain

One of the things that interests me is the border between “art” and pop culture or art and commerce. I love graffiti art and DIY music and I think House on the Rock is far more impressive than Taliesin (yes, I’ve done some time in Wisconsin). I’m no canon-defender; I’ve read my Bourdieu, and I understand the social construction of taste and how that reinforces economic class. But sometimes I think L.A. goes too far in our efforts to appear avante garde or iconoclastic and we just end up looking silly. I submit to you this description of an upcoming screening at the Hammer Museum:

Ed Hardy: Tattoo the World documents the amazing life journey of California artist Don Ed Hardy (b. 1945), who decided at age 10 to be a tattoo artist. After receiving a classical art education with Asian influences, he went on to initiate tattooing’s unprecedented global popularity. Hardy combined sophisticated work on skin with painting, printmaking, writing, publishing, and curatorial work. The film puts this in context with the Ed Hardy lifestyle brand that has saturated the world. (2009, 75 min. Dir: Emiko Omori)

And here is the description of the Hammer Museum’s mission from their website:

The Hammer Museum explores the capacity of art to impact and illuminate our lives. Through its collections, exhibitions and programs, the Hammer examines the depth and diversity of artistic expression through the centuries with a special emphasis on art of our time. At the core of the Hammer’s mission is the recognition that artists play a crucial role in all aspects of human experience. The Hammer advances UCLA’s mission by contributing to the intellectual life of the University and the world beyond.

Discuss.

And if you’re hungry for more Brit films with fog, the double feature on Halloween looks promising: The City of the Dead and The Skull. Satanic conspiracies, Marquis de Sade’s skull, witch burnings…what more do you need for a happy Halloween?

Among my favorites were Joseph Váchal’s Seven Deadly Sins (they are so cute–they look like Pokemon sins) and Artemio Rodriguez’s The Triumph of Death which is one of the large amazing political pieces. Other Rodriguez fans may be happy to know that next weekend, La Mano, the press Rodriguez helped to found, is having it’s annual art sale: December 5-7, 1749 N. Main Street.

LWY's picture used through a creative commons license

Saturday afternoon I had the pleasure of hearing Meghan Daum and Nina Revoyr read at the Hammer, and I’m compelled to break my bloggy silence to recommend both of their books to folks looking for “summer reading” (whatever that is). Those who know me, know my general recommendation for summer reading is Moby Dick, but if you’ve already tackled that, you may want to check out Daum and/or Revoyr.

I admit that I went specifically to hear Ms. Daum whose name you may know from her LA Times column or one of her two books, My Misspent Youth, an essay collection, or Quality of Life Report, her novel. This time, she read from a work in progress, a book about buying a house in 2004, at the height of the housing insanity in LA. More on both Daum and Revoyr after the break. 

The title of the book, she explained, had been Give Me Shelter, until she learned this week that there is another book scheduled for publication six months before hers, also about buying a home during the bloating bubble, titled Gimme Shelter. “So my book is now called Eat, Pray, Love,” she said, “and I don’t want to hear anything about it.” That pretty much set the tone for the whole piece she read, which was clever and made me want to go out and buy her other two books (since this one isn’t due out for two years).  Daum is laugh-out-loud funny and this–whatever it is called–is one of those books that promises to make many of us wince in recognition even while we’re laughing (and here I am thinking in particular about the passage where she describes her first night in her newly purchased home, drinking wine and crying into her dog’s fur, but feeling far superior to those other thirty-something women, at home alone in a rental unit crying into their dog’s fur.

I wasn’t surprised that Daum’s reading was so delightful. The surprise of the evening for me, was Nina Revoyr, who read from her last two novels, Southland, which is set in Crenshaw and spans more than a half century of history:

Moving in and out of the past, from the shipping yards and internment camps of World War II; to the barley fields of the Crenshaw District in the 1930s; to the means streets of Watts in the 1960s; to the night spots and garment factories of the 1990s, Southland weaves a tale of Los Angeles in all of its faces and forms (from Revoyr’s site).

and The Age of Dreaming, about a formerly famous Japanese silent film star now living in obscurity. Both novels are clearly rich in history and very much tied to a sense of place. If you’re looking for a good LA novel, try one of Revoyr’s.

As an aside, the one thing that sometimes makes me not want to go to readings is the stupid questions people ask authors afterward. If you’ve ever been to a reading or two you know to expect a host of questions which basically all translate to one question (“How can I be successful the way you are?”). There was mercifully little of that on Saturday, but there were some moments of shocking denseness. Most notably, one woman asked how Revoyr managed to become interested in the historical events about which she writes. “I lived during those times,” the woman said, “And I barely noticed the Japanese-Americans in my neighborhood being taken to internment camps. How is that you became interested in that history?” And here I will give you a minute to click over to Nina Revoyr’s biography and read for a second. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Revoyr was remarkably polite in her explanation. Me, I just thought, “Yeah, I’ll bet you barely noticed.”
Sigh.