In Search Of-- Literary L.A.

Lionel Rolfe's book is a delightful meandering journey through the past and present of LA literature. At first glimpse, it's not constructed along the lines of an argument. That's because it is not, by Rolfe's own admission, an academic treatise. But after a good read, one finds that a consistent message does come through. And argument or not, it's a great book to curl up with because it gives readers a chance to revel in the past.As one of its most important themes, the book outlines several strains of the Bohemian movement as expressed in Los Angeles. Stressing that Bohemians came from a variety of political backgrounds, Rolfe nonetheless shows the radical strains informing their activities. He also laments that these days, there's not much going on that could be considered truly radical in LA literature, a loss he traces in part to the decline of the coffee house.Literary LA also gives a geographical tour of many of the sites around the city which feature connections to past literary greats. Who knew that Monrovia and Pasadena housed some of America's greatest writers, let alone a small house off an alley in Hollywood where Jack London MAY have slept?Maybe the best chapter is the one on Bukowski. Here Rolfe talks about spending time with the great poet, and here the book gets most gritty. And delicious.If you have an interest in LA literature (and if Rolfe is right, more American literature than you think is Los Angeles-connected) you need to buy this book.

By Paul Lappen, Dead Trees ReviewBased on a series of newspaper pieces written in the late 1970s, this book profiles some of the people who made Los Angeles' bohemian culture in the 20th century. Many people think that San Francisco, with the Beat Generation, was the "center" of bohemian living, but the City of Angels had quite a thriving culture of its own.It all grew out of the coffeehouse scene, where a constantly changing group of poets, literary gypsies, writers in exile (real or self-imposed) and others, would get together and weave pieces of the literary tapestry of Los Angeles. Rolfe profiles the famous, and not so famous, including Theodore Dreiser, Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller, John Steinbeck, Aldous Huxley and the Mann brothers (Thomas and Heinrich). There is also a piece on Upton Sinclair's 1934 campaign for Governor of California. Running on the Socialist Party ticket, he received 45 percent of the vote despite a major smear campaign against him.As part of a musical family (the virtuoso violinist Yehudi Menuhin was an uncle), Rolfe grew up in a household that offered a place to go for musicians and other artists-in-exile. This book was not written as some piece of dry literary history, it was written by someone who was there and lived through that era, and has spent much of his life writing about it.As a lifelong voracious reader, I very much appreciated Rolfe's putting a person and life to the names I have seen on book covers my whole life. Anyone with an interest in 20th century American literature will enjoy this book. I think I'll visit my local library and see how many of these authors are in the stacks. Meantime, this book is highly recommended.

Lionel Rolfe's In Search of LITERARY L.A. is meticulous, catholic, personable and intimate. Refreshingly undetached. One senses the intelligence and love smiling behind each careful stitch of this work.The book does not grind academic axes, shadow box with genres or `dominant traditions' (or grant money or department heads ad nauseum) all the while pretending scholarly aloofness. It does not eschew opinion. How could it since the author has as they say `been around' - as L.A. journalist, writer and bohemian - and knows of which he speaks. And, of which he speaks isspoken with integrity, insight, and a touching charming boyish wonder. And compassion. Rolfe reports, extrapolates, describes the indescribable fabric of a city without one - then or now - and this fabric's effects on an art much tied to, and determined by, time and place: Literature. Literary L.A.'s third edition, like its previous ones, is written in a fierce journalistic style, with ample and eccentric quotes woven in, dates, names, places - whos whens wheres - about writers as different from each other as their respective reactions to Los Angeles. Love and Hate; Sickness and Death; Nightmare and Eden. (Macolm Lowry hated it but it wasthe place he met and was delivered to B.C. by his beloved Marguerie, a native; Nathaniel West suffering on his back with prostate saw the hills burning from his stifling Aptos-Sed room and wrote one of the most powerful scenes of L.A. in Twentieth-century literature; Bukowski talked of Europe and Art as he stumbled the trashy wine-hazed alleyways of central L.A,) The gang's all here - West, Lowry, Faulkner, Huxley, Bukowski and so many many others. (Had I not picked up this particular book I would not have become aware of a tapestry I barely knew existed.) The gang's here. And so is Lionel Rolfe who chronicles their love/hate relationship with the sprawlingKlieg-lit backalley that is Los Angeles.