Paperback L.A. Book 1 - by Susan Latempa

About the Book

Susan Sontag on teen life
Eve Babitz on bodysurfing
Arna Bontemps on the shimmy
Victoria Dailey on bookshops and backrooms
Victor and Mary Lau Valle on pulque
Vin Scully on Koufax
Hector Tobar on inner landscapes
Clancy Sigal on gangster chic
Paul Beatty on PCH partying

Also: Route Riffs. One-liners.

Photo Essays:
L.A. Obscura by Robert Landau

Book Synopsis

Paperback LA is a surprising and witty collection of some of the best writing ever about Los Angeles. More than a dozen major selections include new work and fresh discoveries: a radio broadcast, a ballad, a magazine article, excerpts from prizewinning novels and memoirs. These pieces are punctuated by perceptive photo essays, a quotable lineup of one-liners, and other quick hits.

In the company of a virtuosic band of storytellers, Paperback LA roams across the decades, from just after the Mission era to just after Hollywood's golden age, from the post-hardcore punk scene to a reimagined today. With Susan Sontag, we visit Thomas Mann. With Paul Beatty, we turn a Metro ride into a PCH party. With Héctor Tobar, we search for people who lived somewhere around here. With Victoria Dailey, we look in on the boys in the backroom. Photographers share vivid moments of street sights, skaters at play, and activists on the march.

Paperback LA's contributors have attitude, and they have information. Each inspired work illuminates some aspect of the city's rich, spread-out reality. Some shine a quick klieg light on a moment or person, others gradually reveal a dawning sense of place--in settings that range from a 1920s rural dance pavilion to 1960s Dodger Stadium, with subject matter that sprawls from bookselling to bodysurfing.

Contributions from
Eve Babitz - Paul Beatty - Dan Bern - Arna Bontemps - Carlos Bulosan - Cecil Castelucci - Victoria Dailey - William Heath Davis - Robert Landau - Justin Andrew Marks - Steve Martin - Hugo Reid - Vin Scully - Susan Sontag - Clancy Sigel - Hector Tobar - Victor and Mary Lau Valle - Elysa Voshell/Venice Arts

Review Quotes

"Genius."
Los Angeles magazine

"The mix of short fiction, architectural criticism, creative nonfiction, photography, and even a recipe makes these two titles unique among the dozens of anthologies celebrating literary Los Angeles. Both titles are stand-alone collections, but the brief nature of most of the pieces make for quick reads that bring a new dimension to the city's literary canon"
--KCET (L.A.'s PBS station)

"While the format is perhaps casual, and the book accessible, this first volume's thematic focus is intense, vivid and thoughtful, obviously informed by research, affection, and a critical editorial process. There's a careful curation of voices here, each elaborating on, complicating, arguing for a perhaps previously unconsidered part of the Los Angeles story. Eclectic and revisionist, brave, and, yes, incredibly fun."
-- Bibliocracy, KPFK public radio Los Angeles

About the Author

Susan LaTempa is a Los Angeles editor. At LA Style, West Coast Plays, Padua Hills Theater Festival, Westways, The Los Angeles Times, and Liberty Hill Foundation, she's worked with journalists, playwrights, novelists, recipe developers, landscapers, photographers, and videographers. She's concentrated on addressing LA's vast, cosmopolitan audiences, in the process helping shape dozens of memorable articles, reviews, memoirs, parodies, essays, theater pieces, and videos that have illuminated so many aspects of LA.