Becoming Los Angeles - by D J Waldie (Hardcover)

About the Book

Becoming Los Angeles, a new collection by the author of the acclaimed memoir Holy Land, blends history, memory, and critical analysis to illuminate how Angelenos have seen themselves and their city. Waldie's particular concern is commonplace Los Angeles, whose rhythms of daily life are set against the gaudy backdrop of historical myth and Hollywood illusion. It's through sacred ordinariness that Waldie experiences the city's seasons. In his exploration of sprawling Los Angeles, he considers how the city's image was constructed and how it fostered willful amnesia about the city's conflicted past. He encounters the immigrants and exiles, the dreamers and con artists, the celebrated and forgotten who became Los Angeles. He measures the place of nature in the city and the different ways that nature has been defined. He maps on the contours of Los Angeles what embracing--or rejecting--an Angeleno identity has come to mean.

Book Synopsis

Best-selling author and beloved chronicler of Los Angeles D.J. Waldie reconsiders the city in a collection of contemporary essays.

Nobody sees Los Angeles with more eloquence than D. J. Waldie.
- Susan Brenneman, Los Angeles Times Deputy Op-Ed Editor

Becoming Los Angeles, a new collection by the author of the acclaimed memoir Holy Land, blends history, memory, and critical analysis to illuminate how Angelenos have seen themselves and their city. Waldie's particular concern is commonplace Los Angeles, whose rhythms of daily life are set against the gaudy backdrop of historical myth and Hollywood illusion. It's through sacred ordinariness that Waldie experiences the city's seasons. In his exploration of sprawling Los Angeles, he considers how the city's image was constructed and how it fostered willful amnesia about the city's conflicted past. He encounters the immigrants and exiles, the dreamers and con artists, the celebrated and forgotten who became Los Angeles. He measures the place of nature in the city and the different ways that nature has been defined. He maps on the contours of Los Angeles what embracing--or rejecting--an Angeleno identity has come to mean.

Becoming Los Angeles draws on a decade of Waldie's writing about the intersection of the city's history and its aspirations. He asks, what do we talk about when we talk about Los Angeles today? In a global, cosmopolitan city, is there value in cultivating a local imagination? And he wonders how to describe a city that is denser and more polarized and challenged by climate change, homelessness, and economic disparity. There will always be romance in the idea of Los Angeles, but it requires renewed hope to sustain. Becoming Los Angeles is a further account of how Waldie gained a sense of place, which James Mustich, author of 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die, described as "an almost sacramental act of attention." Becoming Los Angeles is ultimately a book about learning how to fall in love with wherever it is you are.

Called a writer whose work is a "gorgeous distillation of architectural and social history" by the New York Times, whose essays and memoirs, said the Los Angeles Times, "conjure the idiosyncratic splendor of Southern California life," D. J. Waldie is the author of the acclaimed Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir and other books that illuminate the ordinary and the everyday in lyrical prose. In collaboration with Diane Keaton, Waldie provided the text for two photographic explorations of home: California Romantica, dealing with homes in the Spanish Colonial Revival Style of the early twentieth century, and House, examining post-modern interpretations of domesticity. California Romantica became a Los Angeles Times non-fiction bestseller in 2007. D. J. Waldie's narratives about suburban life have appeared in BUZZ, The Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Georgetown Review, Salon, dwell, Los Angeles Magazine, Spiritus, Gulf Coast, Urbanisme, Bauwelt, and other publications. His book reviews and commentary have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. He lives in the home where he was born in Lakewood, California, where he was formerly the Deputy City Manager.

Review Quotes

"[Waldie provides] a unique vantage point from which to assess various reimaginings of Los Angeles attempted over the decades."--Colin Marshall "The New Yorker" (7/26/2021 12:00:00 AM)

"... a book of many small revelations from a writer who is deeply concerned with finding the soul in a city often seen as only skin deep."--Frances Anderton "KCRW: Design and Architecture" (8/28/2020 12:00:00 AM)

"Becoming Los Angeles is more tart and wise [than Waldie's first book, Holy Land], what you might call an older man's exhausted report on what's still going wrong with our city. Any SoCal citizen should read both; what's news is that the second one is just as bold and smart as his beloved debut, albeit in a different key. ... though Waldie's got his eye on the rear-view mirror, he's angling it in many fresh and welcome directions."--Nathan Deuel "Los Angeles Times" (8/13/2020 12:00:00 AM)

"A native son of Lakewood, a city southeast of Los Angeles, Waldie is a confirmed pedestrian, a walker who does not drive, and as such is an observer of what he sees up close and a thinker who reflects on what he gazes upon. Fortunately for Angelenos and thoughtful urban residents, he strips away the carefully constructed myths that obscure and distort the significant but disturbing actions of the past. Throughout this volume he asks: 'Can awareness of the city's past be of any worth to us except as nostalgia or irony?'
Throughout his book, D. J. Waldie expresses faith, hope and love while describing the human foibles and abject failures across the centuries since Los Angeles was founded in 1781. With contradictions in the very heart of the city, Waldie still recognizes its moments of beauty."--Michael E. Engh "America Magazine" (11/19/2020 12:00:00 AM)

"The work touches on the history of the city dating back to the 19th century and explores topics such as pedestrians, the city's density, smog, weather, homelessness, real-life characters and even the transplants that define the city and give it a sense of place."-- "Los Angeles Daily Times"