Taking a Page from… The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of Los Angeles

Kevin McNamara, editor of the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to the Literature of Los Angeles, will be speaking tonight at Skylight Books in L.A. (or Hell-Lay as LA Weekly’s Michael Simmons calls it). He’ll be joined by contributors William Alexander McClung, Mark Shiel, Bill Mohr, Scott Bryson, and Eric Avila to celebrate the book’s launch. Full details and presenter bios available here. Below, McNamara talks landmarks, the symbolism of Los Angeles and stories of the Southland… a sprawling region made of words and designed by myth, constantly recreated by the literature that defines it.

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Introduction: Landmarks

Kevin R. McNamara[i]

A good deal about California does not, on its own preferred terms, add up.

Joan Didion, Where I Was From (2003)

Defining the geographic extent of Los Angeles is the first challenge for anyone who would study its literature. Concentration defines New York, where even Brooklynites refer to Manhattan as “the city.” LA is defined by sprawl. Much of iconic LA, from the beaches of Baywatch to the streets of Beverly Hills, 90210, lies beyond the city limits. The larger Los Angeles County still fails to encompass Disneyland, Fontana (Mike Davis’s “Junkyard of Dreams”), and Huntington Beach, whose pier is “one of the constituent monuments of the surfing life.” [ii] As a literary subject, however, Los Angeles is less a city, county, or “metropolitan statistical area” than a state of being (of grace, fear, emergency, or exception, depending on whom one reads) anchored in the area south of the Tehachapi Mountains, north of San Diego, west of the desert, and squarely in the collective imagination of utopia, dystopia, and, more recently, the urban future. A tour of some of mythic LA’s landmark features will introduce our subject.

Book Launch for the Cambridge Companion to the Literature of Los Angeles

Los Angeles, CA: Thursday, June 24 (7:30 p.m.): Kevin McNamara, editor of The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of Los Angeles, will be speaking at Skylight Books with phenomenal fellow contributors William Alexander McClung, Mark Shiel, Bill Mohr, Scott Bryson, and Eric Avila to celebrate the launch of the book and the tantalizing hold that [...]

Guest Post: Welcome Frances, Our New Publicist!

My Orientation to The Press and BookExpo America

By Frances Bajet, Publicity

As I’m completely new to both the Press and BookExpo America (aka BEA), I really had no idea what to expect when I found out on my first day that I would be working at Cambridge’s booth. To be honest, the idea of talking to the media and the general public about Cambridge made me want to hide in the supply closet — I had only started work on Monday and was assigned three days later to help run the booth for a full day.

CCLNY Book Launch – Meet the Contributors

New York, NY: If you’re free this coming Sunday, May 2nd, Editors Cyrus Patell and Bryan Waterman are celebrating the publication of The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of New York at the Bowery Poetry Club and Café – starting at 8pm. Local contributors will be reading from their chapters and contemplating the idea of New York literature, past, present, and future. Featuring: Betsy Bradley (previously featured on TSotP here) on Knickerbocker NY from Irving to Wharton, Caleb Crain on highlife/lowlife in the 19th century and Daniel Kane on 1970s poetry and punk rock in the East Village. Bar on hand and books for sale!

You can find out more about the event here. And while we’re on the subject, meet two of the aforementioned contributors: Caleb Crain, author of “The Early Literature of New York’s Moneyed Class” and esteemed blogger at Steamboats Are Ruining Everything and Daniel Kane (author of “From Poetry to Punk in the East Village”).

American Political Science Association 2009

APSA. When I first heard talk of it, I was amazed at how those four little letters could make even the most seasoned marketing associates quiver in fear. “How hard could it be?” I thought.