Literature and Race in Los Angeles (Cultural Margins)

Literature and Race in Los Angeles (Cultural Margins)

by JulianMurphet (Author)

Synopsis

Los Angeles is both the most fragmented and the most minoritized metropolis in America, and its most luridly abstract and aestheticized city. With more than eighty-five languages being spoken in its classrooms, and one homogeneous visual language emanating from its entertainment industry, LA radically challenges the prospects of that archaic representational medium: literature. In its investigation of the work of Bret Easton Ellis, James Ellroy, Anna Deveare Smith and others, Literature and Race in Los Angeles articulates their aesthetic preoccupations with the structures of social space in the city. Harnessing some of the theoretical insights of Henri Lefebvre and the 'LA school' of geographers, Murphet demonstrates the versatility of literary production in LA and speculates about the fortunes of literature in a predominantly visual culture.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 213
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 19 Mar 2001

ISBN 10: 052180535X
ISBN 13: 9780521805353
Book Overview: This is a study of the treatment of the city, specifically LA, in contemporary writing.

Media Reviews
'Murphet brilliantly peels away the hype to expose the racial inferno of Los Angeles history.' Mike Davis
'This is a gripping, compulsive book. In its reading of the literary readings of Los Angeles offered by thriller writers, poets, and performance artists, Murphet makes a decisive contribution to the body of work that [...] we have started to think of as LA studies. The book itself is commandingly written, each sentence deeply-pondered and finely tuned.' Stephen Connor
Murphet writes in the coded words and phrases of a scholar addressing his fellow scholars, but more often he is capable of showing us new and provocative ways to look at our city, ourselves and the writers who have tried to capture us in print. Los Angeles Times