L.A. Woman
In Eve Babitz’s third book, Sex and Rage, the main character Jacaranda Leven comes upon a black-and-white photograph hanging in a grand Hollywood penthouse apartment, next to “a David Hockney swimming pool, and a huge pornographic watercolor by John Altoon.” Shot by Julian Wasser in 1963, the image shows Marcel Duchamp playing chess in an... More
The Untrained Eye
In 1951, Charles Brittin, a mailman and amateur photographer, moved to Venice, Calif., and began to photograph his surroundings: the desolate streets and misty midways, the oil derricks erected by the beach and the vibrant Beat community, with the artist Wallace Berman at its core, that gathered regularly at Brittin’s apartment for impromptu parties. He... More
Janelle Brown on the Pursuit of the California Dream
There are infinite variations on the California Dream, but most Angelenos would probably agree that fame, fortune, sunny skies, golden statuettes and prime real estate are key ingredients. They’d also likely agree that the dream’s shadow side only makes it that much more alluring. With her second novel, “This Is Where We Live” (Spiegel &... More
Arts & Architecture Redux
Its pages may espouse the principles of modernism and minimalism, but in its presentation, Taschen’s Arts & Architecture, the Complete Reprint 1945-67, is as maximal as it gets – in the publisher’s standard fashion. After distilling seven decades of the Italian design journal Domus into 12 hardbound volumes, Taschen took a different approach with A&A,... More
The High Priest of Los Angeles
Last Sunday evening at the Silent Movie Theater, a clip from the 1938 astrological murder mystery “When Were You Born?” was shown as part of an “Occult L.A.” program curated by the author Erik Davis. In the clip, legendary occult scholar Manly P. Hall, who had also written the movie’s script, appeared on screen to... More
Reading, Writing and Robots
At the grand opening of the Echo Park Time Travel Mart on Dec. 15, the Robot Emotions were going like hot cakes (happiness and schadenfreude were the top sellers). The mystery product Chubble, on the other hand, available in more than 50 different varieties, wasn’t really moving. A worker dressed like a cowboy shrugged. “It’s... More
The Return of Elaine Dundy (and Sally Jay Gorce)
“I’ll tell you how it feels to be an overnight success at 86,” said the author Elaine Dundy over the telephone, laughing. She was inviting me to visit her at her Park La Brea home to talk about the recent New York Review Books reissue of her beloved 1958 proto-chick-lit novel, “The Dud Avocado.” Told... More
A Home Unlike All Others
Earlier this summer, almost 100 psychedelic music fans, subculture aficionados, students of the occult and local literati climbed the flower-petal-strewn steps of publisher couple Jodi Wille and Adam Parfrey’s Silver Lake home for a salon celebrating the upcoming publication of “The Source: The Untold Story of Father Yod, YaHoWa 13 and the Source Family” (Process),... More
Back to the Garden
Money may not buy you love, but $2.4 million can buy you prime real estate on “Love Street” – which is the name of a song Jim Morrison wrote about living in Laurel Canyon in the ‘60s. The Doors singer and his girlfriend rented a house near “the store where the creatures meet” (the Canyon... More
Mind Games
Remember the first time you saw a strobe light, and your friends looked like robots in a weird silent movie? Totally trippy, right? You were experiencing a variation on the “flicker effect,” a neurological phenomenon in which pulses of light directly stimulate the brain, altering states of mind and, in some cases, inducing hallucinations. Nowadays... More
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