All Essays

• 

  I Gotta Be Able to Counterattack: Rap and the Los Angeles Riots

  "L.A. hip hop, like the punk and skateboarding subcultures of the 1970s, had sprouted from the imaginations of forgotten kids..."

  Jeff ChangMay 3, 2012
• 

  Dead or Straight: The Conundrum of the Lesbian Coming-of-Age Story

  How true, how frequent, is the "dead or straight" binary to the lesbian novel at large?

  Laura GoodeMay 2, 2012

  • Fiction

  • Gender & Sexuality

• 

  Ruminations on Riots

  When it comes to matters of race, L.A. would rather forget.

  Wanda ColemanMay 2, 2012
• 

  Fix-up Artist: The Chaotic SF of A.E. van Vogt

  "The disjointed novel is more in vogue today than at any previous point in history."

  Ted GioiaApr 30, 2012
• 

  The Embers of April 1992

  "Los Angeles became a carnival of repression."

  Mike DavisApr 30, 2012
• 

  Perched on Nothingness

  Juan Felipe HerreraApr 30, 2012
• 

  Reality Hunger: On Lena Dunham’s “Girls”

  For Hannah, talking is a way of coming to terms with, and owning, her appetites.

  Jane HuApr 28, 2012
• 

  Mr. Amis’s Planet

  Martin Amis has always been a casualty of his own biography.

  Morten Høi JensenApr 25, 2012
• 

  Weetzie Bat Meets the Genie

  "Block paints Los Angeles in late-eighties' Rococo: Patrick Nagel doing the Go-Gos in dayglo."

  Bennett MadisonApr 23, 2012

  • Young Adult & Children’s Literature

• 

  Novels Are Not the Only Books

  "As soon as I finished reading 'Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?' I wanted to take stock of the Winterson canon."

  Audrey BilgerApr 20, 2012
• 

  Death and the Library

  I held my father's copy of Mein Kampf in my hand wondering if it should be kept, donated, or set on fire in the backyard.

  Seth GreenlandApr 19, 2012
• 

  Rivers of Blood: On Guillermo Fernández García

  On the murder of the poet and translator Guillermo Fernández Garcia.

  Dolores DorantesApr 18, 2012
• 

  You Say the Swimming Pool’s Half Empty, I Say the Swimming Pool’s Half Full

  Swimming pools, movie stars.

  Geoff NicholsonApr 18, 2012
• 

  Who Invented Chaplin's Tramp?

  It wasn't Chaplin they cheered, of course; it was the Tramp.

  Jon BoorstinApr 18, 2012

• Jerry Stahl on Historical Fiction & Memoir

  Apr 16, 2012
• 

  Denise Hamilton on Damage Control

  Apr 16, 2012