Books in Brief

Sex, Death, and God in L.A., edited and with an introduction by David Reid (Pantheon, 354 pp., $23)

LOS ANGELES as the new Alexandria? David Reid sees the City of the Angels, which is increasingly a mecca for yearning throngs from five continents, as a modern mirror of the “crowded and cosmopolitan” megalopolis of antiquity: “global capital of science, scholarship, mass media, mystery religions, occultism, advanced sensuality, and avant-garde schools of asceticism.” This book appeared before the riots, but the concept of Los Angeles as a capital of the age, a theater of ambition percolating with life and diversity, still carries force. But Reid’s hopefulness isn’t shared by all his essayists. Mike Davis, Alexander Cockburn, and Rubén Martínez see forbidding shadows downtown, where low-income housing is seized and demolished to make way for temples of finance (the writers don’t make the connection and argue for reviving property rights, however). The dross at the end of some rainbows fascinates Lynell George, who writes of death in the city, including teen suicide among the rich. Jeremy Larner and David Thomson remind us of the ugliness— and lure—of The Industry. And Carolyn See tells how romantic involvements have carried her across ethnic boundaries—but the city’s patchwork of cultures still leaves her with as much apprehension as hope. Was the same true for many in Alexandria as they struggled to claim the opportunities unique to their own era’s international city? —Harold Johnson

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Harold Johnson

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Sex, Death, and God in L.A., edited and with an introduction by David Reid (Pantheon, 354 pp., $23)

LOS ANGELES as the new Alexandria? David Reid sees the City of the Angels, which is increasingly a mecca for yearning throngs from five continents, as a modern mirror of the “crowded and cosmopolitan” megalopolis of antiquity: “global capital of science, scholarship, mass media, mystery religions, occultism, advanced sensuality, and avant-garde schools of asceticism.” This book appeared before the riots, but the concept of Los Angeles as a capital of the age, a theater of ambition percolating with life and diversity, still carries force. But Reid’s hopefulness isn’t shared by all his essayists. Mike Davis, Alexander Cockburn, and Rubén Martínez see forbidding shadows downtown, where low-income housing is seized and demolished to make way for temples of finance (the writers don’t make the connection and argue for reviving property rights, however). The dross at the end of some rainbows fascinates Lynell George, who writes of death in the city, including teen suicide among the rich. Jeremy Larner and David Thomson remind us of the ugliness— and lure—of The Industry. And Carolyn See tells how romantic involvements have carried her across ethnic boundaries—but the city’s patchwork of cultures still leaves her with as much apprehension as hope. Was the same true for many in Alexandria as they struggled to claim the opportunities unique to their own era’s international city? —Harold Johnson