Mexican Saints, Playboy Bunnies and a Brown James Dean

ON Tuesday night at the Guadalajara Intl Book Fair I also took in a robust panel on LA's creative nonfiction writers, moderated by Veronique de Turrene. It included:

Crime novelist Richard Rayner, a native of Yorkshire who worked for Time Out in London and helped revive Granta in Cambridge, recalled how he dropped it all to move to LA to follow a Playboy bunny to whom he was only briefly married. (Imagine that.) He also talked about -- more seriously -- William Mulholland's breaking of a Central California dam, to slake LA's thirst for water, that drowned hundreds of immigrant farmers in its rush to the sea. The image is a template for his new book about the California crime, "A Bright and Guilty Place."

Artist J. Michael Walker talked about how years spent living in Mexico after his life in the States seemed to have bottomed out led him to connect deeply with Catholic iconography and Latin culture, which he brings into his work on saints and neglected, often Latino parts of LA.

East LA native Luis Rodriguez ("Always Running") discussed his connections to his mother's native Chihuaha, how his sense of political purpose led to his artistic purpose, and his work to establish a local press create and sustain a literary and cultural space in LA.

Polymath writer Ruben Martinez recalled his parents meeting as his mother walked out of a church in East LA: According to family myth, his father was turning the corner in a red MG, "looking like a brown James Dean," and the rest is history. Speaking of history, Martinez spoke eloquently about LA as an amnesiac "anti-historical city," projecting itself into the future rather than reflecting on the past.

All in all, fascinating stuff. And that's Mulholland on the right.

Denis Johnson vs. The Reclusive Writer

ALMOST exactly two years ago i was walking through Book Expo America in ny with the galley for denis johnson's then-new "tree of smoke." at least half a dozen people who saw his name on the oversized spine stopped me and asked, with some excitement, where they could get one. i've never had a similar experience with another writer. 

(the vietnam-set book, of course, went on to win the sometimes noirish, sometimes epic author a long overdue national book award.)

that palpable sense of anticipation -- and my sense that johnson would once again refuse to do press or appearances for the novel -- led me to write THIS piece on the phenomenon of "the reclusive writer." as someone who's loved salinger in high school and pynchon since college, it was a subject i'd been thinking about for years.

as luck would have it, FSG has just released the new johnson novel, "nobody move," which is an expanded version of his monthly installments for playboy last year. (the magazine is trying a similar trick with a james ellroy memoir right now.)

johnson's "nobody move," is a stripped down crime novel that resembles jim thompson or early tarantino.  “What the —? Where’s the literary?" johnson asked when he read part of it in greenwich village not long ago. "I thought I put something literary in my suitcase, but this is just cheap pulp fiction.” 

your humble correspondent, of course, is a lover of cheap pulp fiction. this -- approvingly reviewed here -- is neither at the level of thompson, hammett, etc. nor as good as even overlooked johnson novels like "already dead" or "rescusitation of a drowned man." but it's brisk and appealing in its own way: johnson certainly writes about lowlifes better than anyone i know right now.

as for recluses, i see salinger is still cranky today.

and did anybody remember that pynchon (that's him in the navy cap) wrote "likes pizza; dislikes hypocrites" in his hs yearbook? i cannot think of a better statement of purpose for any writer.

Photo credit: intersection for the arts

Chasing Women with James Ellroy

OVER the last year or so i've been lucky enough to hang out with james ellroy, self-proclaimed demon dog of american crime fiction, including a bizarre/memorable dinner at taylor's steakhose at which the author insisted i bring along some good looking women.

because he always seems to be on camera -- barking like a dog, offering off-color anecdotes and ethnic jokes, and generally acting out -- it was intriguing to follow him last week when an actual camera crew was on him.

ellroy was walking around LA's old-money hancock park neighborhood -- his teenage 'hood -- for a video doc playboy will post on its website... the video, like his new memoir/essay in playboy, gets at how the murder of his mother sent him on a tailspin and shaped his relationships with women. (the "relationships" in the hancock park chapter mostly involved stealing underwear and watching girls undress through windows.)

you can read all about it in my latest LATIMES piece. and it's playboy's april issue you want.

i remember moving to LA in 1997, the summer before the film "LA confidential" came out... everyone i knew -- film people, music people, book people -- was talking about the movie and how good it was. that sent me and a lot of other people into a fascination with the mad dog's work. 

here is a piece i wrote last year about the weird inability of hollywood to match LA Conf with another good adaptation. ellroy's next novel is due this fall.

i welcome comments, especially, from anyone who's read the playboy stuff.