Review 399: L.A. Exile

L.A. Exile: A Guide to Los Angeles Writing 1932-1998 edited by Paul Vangelisti with Evan Calbi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Generally, collections that feature excerpts from longer works I do not enjoy, but this one is a bit of an exception.

Reading one entry after another with a focus on Los Angeles brings forth some semblance of coherent structure that forms a picture the editors are attempting to portray, that Los Angeles is a place of exile. Not that I agree, although…the size of the place does make it challenging.

The geographic locations of where these writers lived are within the boundaries of the county, not all firmly set within the city limits. It is a sprawling metropolis, where San Francisco is more contained. Why compare to “The City”? Well, the editor does, and it was the most populous city in the state until the 1930s.

One major complaint is the amount of space given to the women writers. Of course, there are fewer in number (5 out of 38), but the space devoted to each woman was quite small too. Each entry is as follows: a picture of where the writer lived, a short biography that typically focused on explaining their time living in L.A., then a selection of their writing. This selection was usually around 7 pages, but for the women it was usually 3.

The quality of the writing was quite good. If you compare the writing of today, it is vastly different than what is found in this book. While the book subtitle states up to 1998, most of the selections are mid-century, and the writers themselves older, generally born around the last decade of the 19th century, into the first few decades of the twentieth. The entries are listed alphabetically by last name, with about half of the writers being unknown to me.

A common theme among the writers was being associated with movies. Often, they came to L.A. to make some money scriptwriting then went back to live where they enjoyed. One writer even mentioned this era of writers were involved with the pictures instead of teaching, which today is where many writers earn their living, with a university. The other grouping are poets, eleven of them (although a couple wrote more than poetry, but that was featured).

A few surprises for me of writers living in the LA area of note: John Steinbeck, Gore Vidal, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, just to name a few. And yes, all were here to write for movies, except Steinbeck who lived through a stipend by his father. Quite a few that are well known were a surprise to me, as I always associated their lives with another location, but most of these writers didn’t stick around. A few did, Upton Sinclair and Thomas Mann did.

One final note, I got this book as a gift many years ago and was reluctant to read it as I mentioned above. Then, the first entry was a difficult starting off point. Maybe it seemed great to the editors, but for me that almost made me not read this book ever. Now that I finished, I’m glad I took the time with it.