I was more than intrigued when Erik Morse proposed a series of interviews about the legacy and theory of hotels in this city. Beyond my personal recollections of happily eating grilled cheese sandwiches with my grandparents at the coffee shop counter in the Beverly Hills Hotel when they visited from the East Coast when I was a kid; or gazing at the hulking remains of the Ambassador Hotel before it was torn down, driving past on Wilshire Boulevard; or even sneaking into the Hollywood Regency — a former hotel (where the actor Divine was staying the night he died) turned apartment building, that had become a squat and skateboarding destination (the pool was drained) — for a one-day, illicit art show years ago, I had never fully considered the powerful symbolism and function the hotel has in the experience of Los Angeles. Reading over Erik’s drafts, though, I certainly began to. These interviews, with premiere writers of urban theory, history, memoir and fiction, as well as the filmmaker Thom Andersen and entertainer Sid Krofft, examine the topic from infinite angles. Erik was tireless in putting them together and the experience of editing them was immersive and illuminating; it has left me forever a subscriber to his particular idea of hotel theory.—Kate Wolf

Click here to read “Hotel Theory.”

As part of our 2012 fund drive, we’re spotlighting some of our editors’ favorite pieces, none of which would be possible without the support of our readers. Donate now and as an added bonus, all donors will receive our monthly Digital Edition. Please make a donation today: click here and you’ll be taken to a donation form generously hosted for us by UC Riverside.

All week, the Los Angeles Review of Books has been raising money to help us stay strong in 2013. We were challenged with a matching grant that would get us to $20,000. Today we reached that goal, and in fact we exceeded it, thanks to you. 

We are deeply grateful to all of our sponsors, including:

Cinefile, City Lights, Green Apple, Iconoclast, Obvious State Literature-Inspired Fine Art Prints, Out of Print Clothing, Readers’ Books, Skylight Books, Sylph Editions and The Center for Writers & Translators at the American University of Paris, the incomparable Chris Ware and Word Books.

In our short time on the Web, the Los Angeles Review of Books has been a smashing success. While we’ve become the home of some of the smartest, sharpest writing on culture and the literary arts, we haven’t been so good at telling our readers how much we rely on them. Clearly, you were ready to help when we did. 

Congratulations to Steven Ross from Los Angeles, who put us over our $10,000 fund drive goal and is the lucky recipient of the Cahiers series.  Here’s what he had to say about why he gave to LARB:

“I am pleased to help support one of the most important new cultural ventures of the last decade.  At a moment in time when newspapers have decimated their book review sections and when the few that remain tend to focus on more popular books, LARB remains an intellectual beacon covering an extraordinarily wide range of new  works in dozens of fields.  The reading public is grateful for all you do.  Thanks!”

As a reader-supported institution, we will continue to rely on you to make LARB a permanent part of the literary landscape. Thank you to everyone for your support. 

The Fairy Tale Project, as we’ve come to know it at LARB, was conceived in collaboration with Young Adult Section Editor Cecil Castellucci. We were both very excited by the idea of studying the lasting resonance of these ancient stories, which snuck like stowaways through the centuries, hiding in the nurseries during the dark ages, when stories about sex and romantic love were shunned. These tales are practically written on our DNA— who doesn’t know the story of Cinderella? Say “Snow White,” and seven dwarves pop into your mind. Analysis of these tales began in earnest in the early 20th century, with critics like Bruno Bettelheim, who used Freud’s techniques of psychoanalysis to shed light on fairy tale motifs. Adaptations are another form of analysis: by extracting and interpreting certain elements of the story, contemporary writers continue to make these tales relevant. 

Aimee Bender’s extraordinary fiction is a direct descendant of the folktale. These stories are as various as wildflower species, a point Bender makes in her essay, but there are certain consistencies. In his wonderful introduction to the collection, Italian Folktales, Italo Calvino writes the following: “There must be fidelity to a goal and purity of heart, values fundamental to salvation and triumph. There must also be beauty, a sign of grace that can be masked by the humble, ugly guise of  a frog; and above all, there must be present the infinite possibilities of mutation, the unifying element in everything: men, beasts, plants, things.” Like these early tales, Bender’s stories are full of transformation and unlikely occurrences, while her characters pursue their original purpose. In her essay “The Most Romantic Story Ever Told,” Bender considers the lasting significance of one of fairy tales’ greatest hits, “Beauty and the Beast.” Her exploration of this famous story is full of insight and surprise; like the best fairy tales, it is a reflection of ourselves, dressed in extraordinary clothes.—Clarissa Romano

Click here to read “The Most Romantic Story Ever Told,” Aimee Bender’s essay on Beauty and the Beast.

As part of our 2012 fund drive, we’re spotlighting some of our editors’ favorite pieces, none of which would be possible without the support of our readers. Give today and as an added bonus, all donors will receive our monthly Digital Edition. Please make a donation today: click here and you’ll be taken to a donation form generously hosted for us by UC Riverside.

We have a final giveaway for our LA-based readers, generously donated by Cinefile Video: a Gold Membership, which includes 10 free rentals. Peruse the best selection of films (new releases, Criterion favorites, etc.) and support a legendary LA spot with a $50 donation to LARB.

Every dollar you give directly supports our ongoing mission to publish the best that is thought, written, painted or drawn. Click here and you’ll be taken to a donation form generously hosted for us by UC Riverside.

Matt M. made the donation that put us over the top for our Wednesday fundraising goal. He’ll receive this one-of-a-kind “blue line” proof from Chris Ware’s Building Stories. When we told Matt the good news he emailed to say, “I’m happy to support the Los Angeles Review of Books bringing book reviews and discussion into the 21st Century. I appreciate the variety of their coverage and the depth of their essays in particular.”

Thank you to Matt and everyone else who has donated to our fund drive this week. Your generosity will help the Los Angeles Review of Books stay strong in 2013.

If you haven’t donated yet, there’s still time to before our drive ends.

When I learned that Jon Wiener was publishing a collection of interviews with Gore Vidal, I could think of no better person to review the book than Michael Kammen. The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian is not only one of the great cultural archivists of our time, he has also weighed in on Vidal’s work and legacy on multiple occasions.  My hope was to create a dialogue of sorts between these three great writers such that their perspectives—a historian, a cultural critic and a journalist—could come together around the political issues of our time.

Today, we published a new article by Michael Kammen examining the life and legacy of Howard Zinn. It’s another example of the caliber of writers we strive to bring to our readers on a regular basis.  -Jonathan Hahn

Click here to read “Gore Vidal Redux,” Michael Kammen’s review of a collection of Gore Vidal interviews.

As part of our 2012 fund drive, we’re spotlighting some of our editors’ favorite pieces, none of which would be possible without the support of our readers. If you help us raise $10,000 this week, we can secure another $10,000 as a matching grant. We can’t do it without you. And as an added bonus, all donors will receive our monthly Digital Edition. Please make a donation today: click here and you’ll be taken to a donation form generously hosted for us by UC Riverside.

Photo by Lisa Jane Persky

Byron Coley and I just missed one another at New York Rocker and L.A Weekly but I’ve long appreciated his work and hoped for a chance to do something together. Last year, it occurred to me that Ed Sanders new book, Fug You: An Informal History of the Peace Eye Bookstore, the Fuck You Press, the Fugs, and Counterculture in the Lower East Side couldn’t be better served than by Byron. Coley has spent most of his life soaking in subculture, counter-culture and various underground scenes. He’s a master on the music, words, sense and nonsense of  such movements. And Coley is also known for his own use of language, which includes toss-offs like “puh,” a word that fans of his writing depend upon to describe the formerly indescribable. He’s practiced at parsing the obscure. So, Byron’s the guy to write about the guy who wrote about Charles Manson and minions in ‘The Family.’ Byron’s the guy to write about the leader of The Fugs, one of the most original, particular and peculiar bands of all time. Byron’s the guy to explain to you why the educated poet/scientist/entertainer, Ed Sanders means so much. Have some fun. Remember the bad old days and what was good about them. Dig.—Lisa Jane Persky

Click here to read “Golden Filth.”

As part of our 2012 fund drive, we’re spotlighting some of our editors’ favorite pieces, none of which would be possible without the support of our readers. If you help us raise $10,000 this week, we can secure another $10,000 as a matching grant. We can’t do it without you. And as an added bonus, all donors will receive our monthly Digital Edition. Please make a donation today: click here and you’ll be taken to a donation form generously hosted for us by UC Riverside.

Photo by Andy Zax

Julia Lupton interviews her twin sister Ellen Lupton, a curator of “Graphic Design: Now In Production,” on view through January 6, 2013, at the Hammer Museum. Here’s an excerpt:

But design in California goes beyond movies, malls, and theme parks, and you’ll see oppositional and artisanal kinds of work in the show as well. In the late 1990s, for example, Dave Eggers famously deployed his desktop publishing skills to build a publishing enterprise with an assertive graphic presence. The McSweeney’s empire of products shows how design, typography, and the physical craft of bookmaking can merge creatively with writing, editing, and publishing. Detroit native Ed Fella, who has been teaching at CalArts for over two decades, has produced an ongoing series of low-tech, self-published posters that mix PressType letters with sliced, diced, and hand-drawn alphabets. Also made in California are screenprinted wallpapers designed by Geoff McFetridge and urban birdhouses produced by sign painter Jeff Canham and sculptor Luke Bartels. Such work taps into California’s long love affair with regional traditions, countercultural experiment, and back-to-the-woods craftsmanship.

If you’d like to see more pieces like this in the Los Angeles Review of Books, donate now.

Image credit: Fanette Mellier, “Specimen,” 2008, Courtesy the artist

If you help us raise $10,000 this week, a generous reader will match it with a check for another $10,000. 

That’s $20,000, money critical to our future. 

The week is half over and we’re almost halfway to our goal. If you haven’t donated yet, please do so now. If we don’t hit our goal, we’ll miss out on that matching grant which is so important to keeping the Los Angeles Review of Books going strong into 2013.

Click here to make a donation.

**Update 11/29/12: the Chris Ware proof is no longer available. Congratulations to the donor who will be receiving it soon. But don’t let that stop you from making a donation!**    

Less than three days are left in our fundraising drive and we haven’t made our goal yet. Remember, we need to raise $2,000 each day this week in order to receive a grant of another $10,000. This money is crucial for LARB’s continued success.

Please give now. Even $25 goes a long way.

As an incentive, we have something special for the person who helps us make our goal today. The person who puts us over the top of our next $2000 will receive the original “blue line” proof (pictured above) of Chris Ware’s critically acclaimed new graphic novel Building Stories. Click here and you’ll be taken to a donation form generously hosted for us by UC Riverside.

Photo by Lisa Jane Persky

I’ve known Judith for a couple of years, and we’ve sometimes talked about her growing up Mormon in Utah, a story that fascinates me.I want to know about how a writer as fierce and fearless as Judith got to here from there.  

Even before Willard Mitt Romney snagged the nomination for President, I suggested Judith write a piece about Mormonism for the L.A. Review of Books, a piece with as much autobiographical material as she saw fit. She kept ducking it, and I surmised, with Sherlock Holmes-like intuition, she was not ready to write that story. Then, one day, she started. Timing is always mysterious in the life of a writer. Imagine how delighted I was to get this desert-dry, historically rich, revealing, wonderfully one-of-a-kind piece, which turns out to be the start of an autobiography she will write for Pantheon. —Laurie Winer

Click here to read “The Mormon Chronicles” by Judith Freeman.

As part of our 2012 fund drive, we’re spotlighting some of our editors’ favorite pieces, none of which would be possible without the support of our readers. If you help us raise $10,000 this week, we can secure another $10,000 as a matching grant. We can’t do it without you. And as an added bonus, all donors will receive our monthly Digital Edition. Please make a donation today: click here and you’ll be taken to a donation form generously hosted for us by UC Riverside.

See image credit below.

Donate to the Los Angeles Review of Books this week and receive a one-year subscription to our monthly digital edition. Our digital editions bring together our best recent and forthcoming pieces, chosen by one of our editors, exploring a different theme each month. Recent topics include politics and Young Adult fiction, and December’s issue will feature a collection on art and architecture.

Published in two formats, our ebooks can be read on just about any e-reader, or downloaded to your computer. Our digital editions let you read carefully selected LARB essays wherever you are - in bed, at a cafe, on a plane, train, or bus. Just not while you’re driving, please.

But the only way to receive our digital editions is to make a donation right now. In addition to receiving the next 12 editions, you’ll also help get us closer to our goal of raising $10,000 this week, which will enable us to receive a $10,000 matching grant. Keep LARB going strong into 2013 and receive a one-year subscription to our digital edition. Do it now.

Click this link to donate now and you’ll be taken to a donation form generously hosted for us by UC Riverside.

YA Cover Illustration © Harry Briggs
Politics Cover Illustration © Lisa Jane Persky
Digital Editions Art Director: Lisa Jane Persky

Day two of the LARB fund drive brings three new pieces on Judy Blume, including Nell Beram’s look at the classic Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. LARB is leading the conversation on YA literature, but we’re only able to do it because of the financial support of readers like you. Please show how much you love LARB and make a donation now. This link will take you to a donation form generously hosted for us by UC Riverside.

**Updated 11/28/12: Out of Print gift cards are no longer available; they have been taken. But don’t let that stop you from making a donation!**

Our fund drive is nearly half over, and we’re just about on track to make our goal of raising $10,000. Remember, we need this money in order to receive a matching grant of $10,000. This money is critical to LARB’s future. Please give now.

The Los Angeles Review of Books relies on the support of readers like you to publish essays like “Indigenous to the Hood” by Leslie Jamison:

The here of Watts is pastel houses with window gratings in curly patterns. Here is yard sales with bins full of stuffed animals and used water guns. Here is Crips turf. “Being a spectator of calamities taking place in another country,” writes Susan Sontag, “is a quintessential modern experience.” Part of what feels strange about this tour is that you’re assuming the posture of a tourist — How many people have died here? How do the boys come of age?—but you are only 18 miles from where you grew up.

Alfred says more people have died in LA gang conflicts than the Troubles in Ireland. You’d never thought of it like that, which is his point: no one thinks of it like that. These blocks look so ordinary — South Central Avenue itself is just a gritty bracelet of strip malls and auto body shops; Watts is parched lawns that once burned. The here of Watts was on fire in 1965. Black boys who hadn’t been let into the Boy Scouts were sick of it. They made their own clubs. 35,000 people rose up. People got sick of it again in 1992, when Rodney King was beaten and thousands of people, the children of the Watts riots, said enough. Reginald Denny with a brick to the head said enough.

Click here to read the rest.

As part of our 2012 fund drive, we’re spotlighting some of our editors’ favorite pieces, none of which would be possible without the support of our readers. If you help us raise $10,000 this week, we can secure another $10,000 as a matching grant. We can’t do it without you. And as an added bonus, all donors will receive our monthly Digital Edition. Please make a donation today: click here and you’ll be taken to a donation form generously hosted for us by UC Riverside.

Photo by Lisa Jane Persky

Josh Wilker was late. In fact, we both were. I’d asked him to review Chad Harbach’s “The Art of Fielding” sometime prior to that book’s release in hardcover, and then we both … forgot about it. Rather, Josh and his wife had a baby, the book appeared to widespread acclaim, and by the time I noticed the essay had never arrived, we were on to other things. Only we weren’t. In April, 2011, just prior to LARB’s launch, Josh sent me his piece. It was kind of about Harbach’s novel and also about Moby Dick, Tom Seaver, LSD, rural corruption, American utopias. It was amazing, and it struck me as everything I’d ever want “criticism” (if that’s what it is) to be: both addressing its subject and free of that subject, measured and yet emotional, imagistic but abstract, lettered and articulate even as its author happily admitted to areas of ignorance. It was, and is, one of my favorite things we’ve yet published, and the fact that it was “late” (according to the promotional cycle, which has absolutely nothing to do with how books live in the world) was simply overturned by the fact that it is timeless. Just like its subjects, the American novel and our beloved pastime, unfolding in those mortal fields of eternity.—Matthew Specktor

Click here to read “Measures of American Beauty,” Josh Wilker’s review of The Art of Fielding.

LARB is leading the conversation on David Foster Wallace, with pieces this week on his depression, the influence of math on his writings, a roundtable discussion, and his essay collection Both Flesh and Not.

Every one of these articles was made possible by donations from readers like you.

This week we have been given a fantastic opportunity. If we raise $10,000 by Friday we will get a matching grant of $10,000. We need your help to do it. Click the red button and you’ll be taken to a donation form generously hosted for us by UC Riverside.

AND don’t forget: for a basic donation of $25 you’ll receive an annual subscription to our monthly magazine, LARB Digital Editions.

***Update 11/27: All of our gift cards have been allocated, but don’t let that stop you from making a donation to help LARB stay strong into 2013.***

Some of the greatest independent booksellers support the Los Angeles Review of Books. Beginning at 11:05 am PST today, be among the first 18 people to make a $40 donation to LARB (or more) and get a $25 store credit redeemable online from one of our fund drive sponsors:

City Lights (San Francisco)
Green Apple (San Francisco)
Iconoclast (Sun Valley, ID)
Readers’ Books (Sonoma, CA)
Skylight (Los Angeles)
Word (Brooklyn, NY)

Please click the red button and make a donation today, using the form generously hosted by UC Riverside. And don’t forget, every donation of at least $25 also receives a free subscription to our monthly magazine.

While our supplies of this special offer are limited, your options on where to buy books are not. 

All our bookstore sponsors sell books online, so whether you live in San Francisco, CA, Elko, NV or New York, NY, you can shop for books and support local booksellers.

What are you waiting for?  Show your love.  Support LARB today.

In our short time on the Web, the Los Angeles Review of Books has been a smashing success. We’ve become the home of some of the smartest, sharpest writing on books and culture you can find anywhere. What we haven’t been so good at is telling our community of readers how much we rely on them. As a non-profit organization, we depend on readers like you to pay our writers and editors and keep our magazine strong. 

Every article you’ve read at LARB was made possible by donations. Now we need your help. This week we’ve been given a fantastic opportunity. If we raise $10,000 by Friday we will get a matching grant of $10,000. We need your help to do it. Click the red button and you’ll be taken to a donation form generously hosted for us by UC Riverside.

If you are one of the thousands of people who have come to love the Los Angeles Review of Books, this is your week to show it. Give now, and help us stay strong in 2013. Please make sure you donate this week. If we don’t hit our target, we’ll miss out on a matching grant that could mean so much for our continued success. For a basic donation of $25 you’ll receive an annual subscription to our monthly magazine, LARB Digital Editions.

The LARB success story is one of the most extraordinary on the Web. Hear about it directly from the people who make it possible every day: our editors.

So what are you waiting for?  Show your love.  Support LARB today.

• Media and expression: theses in tweetform by Nicholas Carr
  
  
• Kafka’s Wound: A digital essay by Will Self
  
  
• Rocket and Lightship: Meditations on life and letters by Adam Kirsch
  
  
• The Neighborhood Effect: On William Julius Wilson and Urban Sociology by Marc Perry
  
  
• Upper Middle Brow: The culture of the creative class by William Deresiewicz (see comments)
   
• A Few Indignant Words for Professor Wampole: A response to the NYtimes’s “How To Live Without Irony” by Stephanie Bernhard

• The Eye by Alice Munro

• The Semiautobiographers by Emily Cooke

• A Piece of Writing to Commemorate the Release of Both Flesh and Not, David Foster Wallace’s New Book of Essays by Tom Dibblee

• Rolling Jubilee: “OWS is going to start buying distressed debt (medical bills, student loans, etc.) in order to forgive it.”

• Poets, Protesters, and Proletarians — Oddballs of the Nineteenth-century by Evan Kindley

• Loss & Gain, Or the Fate of the Book by Anthony Daniels