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...]
Classical LA
ANGELENOS don’t need to be told that they live in one of the nation’s best cities for classical music, but it may still be news to much of the rest of the world. On that count, I wrote a piece for the fall issue of Listen, the classical music magazine, that looks at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Hollywood Bowl, local chamber music series, and oddball programs like Classical Underground.The whole … [Read more...]
The New Yorker’s Young West Coast Writers
THE New Yorker recently announced its 20 Under 40 list of American writers, running some of them in their summer fiction issue and others since. Two of the bunch – Daniel Alarcon and Yiyun Li – were fairly recent profile subjects of mine, and I’ve enjoyed, without surprise, watching their rise. Both are foreign-born writers who’ve settled in the Bay Area and show the ability – despite nativist … [Read more...]
Remembering the Go-Betweens
The Believer's Music Issue, out this summer, has a substantial interview with Robert Forster, co-founder of one of my all-time favorite bands, The Go-Betweens. Robert Christgau's Q&A, while offering no major surprises, captures one of the most literate men in rock music with all his aloofness intact.This is a band I think about a lot -- they were part of my childhood in the '80s before breaking up … [Read more...]
Jonathan Lethem Comes to California
JONATHAN Lethem is well known to readers of The Misread City one of the most consistently fascinating American novelists. Nearly all the writers we celebrate here are West Coast figures – Dick, Le Guin, Chabon, Chandler, Ross MacDonald – and Lethem has stood out as a kind of token Brooklyner. But Lethem, whose most recent novel was the Upper East Side-set Chronic City, has finally seen the light. … [Read more...]
John Lautner House Imperiled
AN EARLY and long overlooked Beverly Hills house by architect John Lautner -- celebrated by fans as an "organic modernist" -- may soon be history. That's the situation a new story of mine, which runs in Saturday's LA Times, describes. The house, which has fallen into serious disrepair, has been owned for 23 years by a couple, originally from Chile, who have lost patience with the place. … [Read more...]
First-ever Philip K. Dick Festival
JUST a few days ago in Colorado, scholars, fans and various oddballs gathered in honor of Philip K. Dick, the eccentric visionary who is a major presence on The Misread City. Your humble blogger was not able to attend, but David Gill, the San Francisco-based savant behind the Total Dick-Head blog chronicled the gathering -- the first of its kind in the US -- for groovy sci-fi/futurism site … [Read more...]
Ray Bradbury, Still Going at 90
THIS Sunday marks the 90th birthday of the first Los Angeles writer I ever read. I can still remember some of the images and moods in his story collection The October Country. And the yearning lyricism and use of The Red Planet as a metaphor for the American West makes The Martian Chronicles, some days, one of my 10 favorite works of fiction.Critic Ted Gioia has a wide-ranging tribute to Bradbury … [Read more...]
"California Crackup"
Anyone living in California right now knows how hard the state is straining, with unemployment above 12 percent and well over that in some inland areas, schools slicing teachers and firing librarians, the infrastructure rotting, and very little faith in our action-hero governor.Joe Mathews was one of the many talented investigative journalists at the LAT Times when I arrived, and like many he … [Read more...]
California Vs. The Great Plains
The writer and urbanist Joel Kotkin has a fascinating piece in a recent Newsweek called "The Great Great Plains," which looks at the way cities like Fargo and Bismarck -- as well as most of Texas -- are booming while much of the rest of the country languishes in a dead economy.It got us here at the Misread City wondering: What are Omaha and Dallas doing right that Los Angeles and other West Coast … [Read more...]