AFTER many years as a child psychologist, and more than a decade of rejection slips for his literary endeavors, Jonathan Kellerman discovered a Ross MacDonald novel at a going-out-of-business sale.Photo by Blake LittleThat was about 30 years ago, and this week, Kellerman publishes the latest in his series of Alex Delaware crime thrillers. This one, Mystery, starts with the leveling of an old hotel … [Read more...]
Elizabeth Taylor in Big Sur
IT'S hardly a great movie, and it seems quite square and timid in its embrace of what we now know as "the '60s" -- art, bohemia, individualism. But I'll never forget Elizabeth Taylor's role in The Sandpiper and those great shots of the Big Sur Coast -- perhaps this blog's favorite West Coast locale.Liz plays a free-spirited singled mother, with raffish friends, and nearly bursts out every … [Read more...]
Remembering Jazz Guitarist Lenny Breau
COULD one of the most inventive and technically gifted jazz guitarist of the last half century be an obscure Canadian raised by country musicians? That's what I often think listening to the mighty Lenny Breau. Readers of this blog know that we try to uncover West Coast culture overlooked by the rest of the nation's media and critical establishment, and Breau was an overlooked West Coast artist par … [Read more...]
Long Beach Opera on the Edge
WHEN you do what I do, you hear a lot of arts advocates and administrators talk about "reaching out," finding "new audiences," "making connections," and so on, and it gets tiresome. In part that's because it seems so calculated, in part because it usually means watering down programming to make it safer and more familiar.LBO's next opera: Philip Glass's "Akhnaten"But Andreas Mitisek, the Austrian … [Read more...]
Eric Puchner and the California Dream
HERE at The Misread City, we try to capture what makes Los Angeles and the West Coast distinct, and aim to look at the way the existing clichés – sun, vapidity, bottomless riches -- both inform and distort our lives here. I can’t think of a better example of this kind of thing than the new essay by Eric Puchner, an Angeleno short story writer and novelis. His new piece in the March GQ, “Schemes of … [Read more...]
Philip K. Dick at the Movies
Tomorrow a new film based on a Philip K. Dick story, The Adjustment Bureau, opens. I’ve not yet seen the Matt Damon/Emily Blunt film yet, but the PKD fans I know are not impressed with it and don’t think it’s true to the author’s vision and thinks it's been skewed too much in a conventional-romantic direction. (Here is a mostly approving review by the NYT's Manohla Dargis.)The film is based on a … [Read more...]
Trouble in Portlandia
ONE of our favorite places, here at The Misread City, is Portland, Ore., and as much as we love the walkable neighborhoods, the groovy coffee shops, and the excellent local cuisine and Oregon Pinots, we find ourselves trapped helplessly in Powell’s bookstore every time we’re up there. (You may also have heard about the show Portlandia starring a member of one or favorite bands.)So the troubles at … [Read more...]
Steve Erickson Novel Coming
LONGTIME Los Angeles writer Steve Erickson will have a new novel next year, These Dreams of You, his publisher, Europa Editions, just announced. Erickson is the writer I point to first when I'm arguing about a difference in East Coast and West Coast literary sensibility. He grew up in a Granada Hills neighborhood wiped out for the freeway, and that sense of spatial dislocation and a disappearing … [Read more...]
Versus Tours the West Coast
I MUST admit, I'd forgotten how good a live band the New York trio Versus could be. Last night's show at the Echo -- part of their first full-scale tour in a decade -- was devastating, reminding me both how strong their playing is and how bogus the notion that indie rock is wimpy.In some ways Versus were typical of '90s indie bands in their use of jangly guitars, strong melodies and distortion. … [Read more...]
Martha Graham vs. Isamu Noguchi
TWO very different artists -- with equally contrasting temperaments -- enjoyed one of the richest collaborations of the 20th century. They were also shaped in some ways by their time in California.Graham with Bertram RossDance pioneer Martha Graham and sculptor/ designer Isamu Noguchi worked together for more than two decades on about two dozen sets; three of them, including Pulitzer-winning … [Read more...]