Literary L.A., by Lionel Rolfe
California Classics Books, 2002
Literary L.A. is a fascinating look at the history of the Los Angeles coffeehouse scene, and Lionel Rolfe does a wonderful job of organizing vignettes of decades into a cohesive, in-depth book.
The introduction and first two chapters serve to give an overview of the scene and its many players. Names are dropped at such a fast & furious pace, that it was necessary for me at times to flip back and forth to remember who was who and how they fit into the picture. If you are already familiar with the L.A. crowd, you may have less trouble than I did with these sections.
When Rolfe heads into the chapters that focus on an individual writer, or group of writers (such as the chapter "Wartime Enclave: The German Writers in L.A."), he really shines. While there are overlapping histories between the writers covered in these chapters, Rolfe deftly handles the short biographies, making sure they have a distinct target, and are not redundant in their coverage of events.
I hate to make lists, but it's important to know which writers he does focus on, in case any of you out there are aficionados of one or another: Norman Hartweg, Henry Miller, Oscar Zeta Acosta, Charles Bukowski, Fred Voss and Joan Jobe Smith ("the married poets"), Jake Zeitlin ("the dean of L.A. booksellers"), Jack London, Charles Fletcher Lummis, Theodore Dreiser, Malcolm Lowry, Nathaniel West, Bertolt Brecht, Charles Laughton, Thomas Mann, Aldous Huxley, Robinson Jeffers and Upton Sinclair. Many other writers and important figures in the L.A. scene are mentioned, but not in so much depth.
A great diversity of voices is represented here. Even if you've never heard of some of these writers, it is good to know their important contributions to the history of American literature.
