More Rosselli

I'm not quite ready to let the Johnny Rosselli thing go. Charles Rappleye recently told me he thought his book on Rosselli would make for a strong television mini-series. Yes, and certainly a great documentary. Rosselli didn't just coordinate the Chicago mob's takeover of the Hollywood unions, or help create Las Vegas, or work with the Kennedy administration to assassinate Castro. He was also the man who supposedly persuaded studio mogul Harry Cohn to cast Frank Sinatra in "From Here to Eternity," a legend Mario Puzo later fictionalized in "The Godfather." Seems like grist for the cinematic mill to me.

Colonial America--Echo Park Version

I just finished reading Charles Rappleye's Sons of Providence. It's about the Brown brothers, Moses and John, who founded Brown University and butted heads over the issue of slavery in colonial Rhode Island. Moses was a Quaker abolitionist, John a hardheaded businessman and slaver. In addition to tracing their lives in full and fascinating detail, Charles presents them as two American archetypes--social reformer and robber baron.

With the vast searching power at your fingertips, you can look up this book's favorable reviews at your leisure. You might start with the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. Allow me to scale the magnitude of this critical success for you. According to David Ulin, the L.A. Times receives 200 books per day for review; they actually review about 12 per week in the Sunday supplement. So the odds of receiving a review are long; to run the table at the nation's top papers is huge. If you've mastered the Google search, you will also learn that Sons of Providence received the George Washington book prize and the $50k cash award that goes with it. That's folding money, people.

To which the fanatical reader of this blog might respond: All very well, but what does any of this have to do with Carey McWilliams and California culture? Well, let's start with the basics. First, Charles was for many years a fixture at the LA Weekly. Who among you expected an award-winning book on colonial America to emerge from the offices of an alternative weekly in Los Angeles? Full disclosure: Charles is originally from Rhode Island. But still.

Second, Charles's first book, a portrait of racketeer Johnny Rosselli, overlapped with the McWilliams story. Specifically, Rosselli was involved with the Chicago mob's takeover of Hollywood unions in the 1930s, a takeover McWilliams tried to resist. By coincidence, Rosselli was back in the news this week when the CIA released its so-called Family Jewels. Those documents show that Rosselli was involved with the agency's attempt to assassinate Castro. Charles gave me that book at a party he hosted at his Echo Park home some years ago, and I put it to good use on the McWilliams bio.

Fall Book List

OK, the book lineup for the Fall course on Los Angeles is set. In order, the books are:

Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land
Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep
Chester Himes, If He Hollers Let Him Go
John Fante, Full of Life
Charles Bukowski, Post Office: A Novel
Joan Didion, The White Album
T.C. Boyle, The Tortilla Curtain

This was a tough list to assemble. Other candidates included Fante's Ask the Dust, Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run?, Bugliosi and Gentry's Helter Skelter, Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Walter Mosley's A Red Death, D.J. Waldie's Holy Land, and many others. I would love to teach Greg Mitchell's Campaign of the Century, Otto Friedrich's City of Nets, and Mike Davis's City of Quartz, but I didn't think they would work in this course. I tried to get some historical coverage here, something from every decade or so, but I would have been happy to teach a course just on Los Angeles in 1939.

The feature films I've penciled in are:

Sunset Boulevard
Devil in a Blue Dress
Endless Summer
Shampoo
Chinatown
Colors
Real Women Have Curves
Laurel Canyon
Crash

There will be documentaries, too:

Zoot Suit Riots
Hollywood on Trial
The Doors

The idea is to pick some evocative works, but also to get some resonances between and among them: Zoot Suit Riots dramatizes McWilliams, Bukowski picks up on Fante, Chinatown comments on The Big Sleep (and McWilliams), Devil in a Blue Dress looks back on Himes, etc. So we'll see how that goes.

McWilliams and Orange County's Secret History

Gustavo Arellano has a piece in the Los Angeles Times on Orange County's amnesia when it comes to its Latino past. That includes the Mendez v. Westminster decision that paved the way for Brown v. Board of Education. As Gustavo notes, McWilliams wrote the counter-history that fills in many of these gaps.

Here's the link:

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-arellano21jun21,1,830485.story?coll=la-news-comment

Fanatical readers of this blog will recall that Gustavo interviewed me for a piece on the citrus strike of 1936 and McWilliams's role in it. He also has a book out, doing well last time I checked, called Ask a Mexican! (For purposes of accuracy, insert an upside down exclamation mark before Ask.) It's based on his column in the OC Weekly. I haven't seen it, but I've read some excerpts and heard him on NPR--sounds funny and edifying.

Fante Tour of Los Angeles

This just in--a Los Angeles Times story about a downtown tour as seen through the eyes of John Fante: novelist, screenwriter, and FOC (Friend Of Carey).

Here's the link:http://www.calendarlive.com/cl-wk-books14jun14,0,1894240.story?coll=cl-home-more-channels

Recall that the link will work only for a few days. (That's why there's no link here to the LA Times review of American Prophet.)

In other news, I'm putting together the reading list for the Fall course on Los Angeles. Fante's Ask the Dust will probably make the cut.

The Tortilla Curtain and Crash

We finished the California Culture class with T.C. Boyle's The Tortilla Curtain. It seemed to be a good way to conclude. To create dramatic conflict, Boyle pits different aspects of the California Dream against one another. For example, the illegal immigrant's dream of economic opportunity threatens the Anglo nature writer's dream of suburban comfort with easy access to "wilderness."

Along the way we hear echoes of earlier California writers, especially Muir and Steinbeck. Boyle throws in some Continental references for good measure; the illegal immigrant is named Candido, and his ordeals easily match those of Voltaire's hero. I'm glad we also watched Real Women Have Curves, if only to balance the depiction of the immigrant experience. Because we also read Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory, I don't think anyone will leave the class thinking that this complex social phenomenon can be represented simply, but some interesting patterns emerged from those three works.

Our last film was Paul Haggis's Crash. It's an adroit film, and I was moved (again) by one scene, but many have challenged its depiction of race relations in Los Angeles. I wonder if that response isn't partly due to the film's high Hollywood finish. Crash is about collisions, but the plot is very tidy, and each character receives a carefully rationed moment of epiphany or redemption. Still, I think it might be a keeper for this class.

EPHS Tonight

I'm talking to the Echo Park Historical Society tonight about Carey McWilliams, one of their notable residents. He really loved his house there, perched on a high, narrow ridge on North Alvarado Street. He lived in it for five years or so, then rented it for decades. He considered moving back after he retired from The Nation, but by that time Iris wasn't driving, and they had a rent-controlled apartment in New York City. He rented an apartment when he taught at UCLA in the late 70s.

The talk is at Barlow Hospital library at 7:00. Here's the link:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/EphsNews

Sam Quinones at Huntington-USC

I attended a talk by the LA Times' Sam Quinones today at the Huntington Library. He spoke with great enthusiasm and candor about the stories he has discovered in Mexico and on "the border," which he treats more as a state of mind than a geographical fact. Completely fresh and unpredictable. My favorite story today involved his being run out of a Mexican town by a community of Mennonite drug dealers.

When I called my friend Adrian Maher, I discovered that he and my good friend Mark Ettlin were Sam's compatriots in the Berkeley co-op scene of the late 70s and early 80s. Now it all comes together.

Here's the link for Sam's latest book:

http://www.amazon.com/Antonios-Gun-Delfinos-Dream-Migration/dp/082634254X/ref=sr_1_1/102-6100122-2414529?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1178762307&sr=1-1

I also saw Bill Deverell, whose Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West does a great job with these events.

Paying the Toll

I'm reading the manuscript for Louise Dyble's Paying the Toll: Power, Politics, and the Golden Gate Bridge, 1923-1971. Louise is especially concerned with the creation, administration, and survival of the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District. Like many special districts, it was supposed to transcend the clamor of special interests and "politics." I'm only a couple of chapters into it, but I can already appreciate Louise's claim that the district was, from the moment of its conception, always already political--often in unhelpful ways.

I'll have more to say when I finish reading the manuscript, but her description of an early encounter with the district indicates her skill as an author:

[When] I explained my interest in the bridge's history and asked to view a selection of early records and files, the full-time public relations officer met my request with prohibitive insurance requirements, claiming that the district could not accept the liability for my presence at their offices. I was informed that the bridge's history had already been written, and it was available at the toll plaza gift shop.

Imagine how many dissertations could have been averted by a well-stocked gift shop!

I've added Louise's new blog, Paying the Toll, over there on your starboard. The book will be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press--soon, I hope.

The Warriors

The Warriors are doing well against the Dallas Mavericks, and everyone is psyched about their playoff prospects. But fanatical readers of this blog may not realize that this outcome was foreshadowed a couple of years ago when I planted myself near Chris Mullin on a flight to Los Angeles.

He was reluctant at first to talk about the Warriors, even after I praised the Baron Davis trade. For an executive v.p. of basketball operations, it probably looked like another boring conversation with someone who didn't know the business--a bit like my encounters with strangers who tell me their great book ideas. But he lit up when I asked him about his playing days with Don Nelson, and we ended up talking about even more interesting topics.

I didn't realize at the time that his response prefigured his decision to bring Nellie back. The Warriors haven't made it to the playoffs since the last time he was here. So let's give it up to Chris for making that happen.

By the way, when the camera picked up Chris at the team's moment of triumph, he was comforting his sleepy daughter. You don't see that often, and I found it refreshing.