IT'S not often that a book of short stories as good as Jim Gavin's Middle Men rolls across our desk -- rarer still when a book of any kind captures Los Angeles, especially its overlooked, non-mythic aspects, quite so intelligently.And don't take our word for it: The galleys of Middle Men come with so many raves from execs, editors, and publicists at Simon & Schuster than I can picture dewy office … [Read more...]
Slacker Noir in San Diego
THERE'S a pretty good TV show that's just made its debut on FX. Terriers -- don't know about the name -- is like a Ross Macdonald novel crossed with The Big Lebowski. Or something like that. Either way, the casting and storytelling are quite fine. (The second episode goes up Wednesday.)Here is my review, which leads this way:The protagonist in FX's "Terriers," Hank Dolworth (Donal Logue), is two … [Read more...]
Jonathan Lethem to the Southland
Novelist Jonathan Lethem, though firmly associated with New York bohemia and a kind of Brooklyn renaissance, will be coming to Pomona College to take over David Foster Wallace's old job.The author of the Brooklyn-childhood novel The Fortress of Solitude and, more recently, the Upper East Side-set Chronic City is well known to readers of The Misread City: He's among the site's core writers, along … [Read more...]
The Enigma of Artie Shaw
One of the orneriest musicians in history, swing-era bandleader and clarinetest Artie Shaw is the subject of a new biography by Tom Nolan. What a character Shaw was -- rising to great heights, dropping out of music when his fame and talent were at their highest, provoking no less than THREE of his many ex-wives to write memoirs about him. He spent his last four decades in the west Valley.Nolan is … [Read more...]
The Return of LA Noir
ONE of LA's greatest exports has always been dread, and our signature writer is still, three quarters of a century later, noir novelist Raymond Chandler. And now, thanks to a new anthology, all that murder, deception and unpleasantness is back.A few years back, local mystery writer Denise Hamilton (The Last Embrace) and Brooklyn's Akashic Books put together a collection called Los Angeles Noir … [Read more...]
Robert Crais vs. LA Noir
TOMORROW is the release date for the new novel by Robert Crais, "The First Rule." Crime fiction aficionados know Crais as a deft, literate writer with a strong sense of place and of social history -- one of the great inheritors of Ross Macdonald in the world of West Coast noir.HERE is my profile of Crais, who is one of the best adjusted novelists I've ever spoken to -- someone who seems … [Read more...]
Ross MacDonald and California
Sometimes it's the outsiders who tell us the most. And Ross Macdonald, the Canadian-reared detective novelist who spent most of his career in and around Santa Barbara, wrote some of the most enduring private eye novels set in the Golden State as well as, between the lines, some of the best social history of the postwar period.HERE is my piece on the work and life of MacDonald (1915-'83), who would … [Read more...]