zoellner-mann

mann

<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/ascent-mann/"></div>After getting hounded out of his native Germany in 1933, the Nobel Laureate writer Thomas Mann — whose sensibilities had been thoroughly aristocratic — fell in love with the messy idea of liberal democracy. He refined this love, one of his last and finest, inside a modernist home he built for his family in Pacific Palisades on the west side of Los Angeles.
Inside a glassy study that looked out at the west ridge of Sepulveda Pass, he wrote the anti-fascist novel Doctor Faustus and a series of speeches broadcast via the BBC into Nazi Germany.
The Mann House still stands at 1550 San Remo Drive — a two-story artifact recently saved from the wrecking ball by the German government — and it is now the center of a continuing effort to promote democracy against a rising tide of authoritarian thought. The home was put on display this week as the site of a reception for a conference on Mann’s democratic idealism and its relationship to today’s arguments and uncertainties. &#8220;The struggle for democracy, the struggle for a free and open society is what will continue to unite us, the United States and Germany,&#8221; said German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in a <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/german-president-opens-thomas-mann-house-in-la/a-44274404" onclick="__gaTracker('send', 'event', 'outbound-article', 'http://www.dw.com/en/german-president-opens-thomas-mann-house-in-la/a-44274404', 'speech');">speech</a> on Tuesday.
Mann’s house is the strongest visual monument to the time when West L.A. was the home-in-exile to a varied group of refugees fleeing the German dictatorship in the 1930s. Mann had originally come over to the U.S. to teach at Princeton University, but he was persuaded to relocate to Southern California after an idyllic summer staying in a rented house in Brentwood. The allure for him — in addition to the easy weather — was contact with fellow expatriates who spoke his language, both literally and intellectually.
He joined a loose confederation of anti-fascists that included the screenwriters Salka and Berthold Viertel, the playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger, the cultural theorists and writing partners Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, theater producer Max Reinhardt, psychiatrist and novelist Alfred Döblin, filmmaker Fritz Lang, composer Arnold Schoenberg, and composer Hanns Eisler. Many of them gathered for drinks and conversation at “Villa Aurora,” the mission revival house on Paseo Miramar owned by Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta.
But Mann’s house — a boxy white shell resembling one of Julius Shulman’s “Case Study” homes — commanded the lion’s share of attention.
The renovating architect, Jan H.P. Dorbritz, describes it as a “long wing,” and the angular structure with clean lines is distinguished by protrusions of stunted walls, subtle diagonal lines scattered here and there, and a patio with a false awning of trellises. A gut rehabilitation is scheduled to be complete in August when three scholars on a fellowship will move in to work on books and articles. If anything, the renovated house — with its minimalist interior — is even more faithful to the modernist outlines of its exterior than when Mann had filled it with overstuffed furniture and baroque styling.
The Mann House is now a permanent cultural extension of the Los Angeles German consulate. While it is comfortably private, it retains a semi-public character. “It shouldn’t be a five-star holiday home,” laughed the director Nikolai Blaumer, who said the guiding principle is to continue Mann’s “nobility of spirit” and the work he did in the name of democracy as a public intellectual.
Mann was not only a citizen of the world during the decade he lived here between 1942-1952. He was also an enthusiastic citizen of Los Angeles, with a taste for genre movies and a love of the lemon orchards that surrounded his then-rural estate. In this affinity for the L.A. lifestyle, he differed from many of his German neighbors. Bertolt Brecht was irritated by the combination of urbanity and vegetation, complained about the bland-tasting food in the markets and the endless traffic on the roads, and wrote poems about artists having to “play the whore” to work in the movies. Doblin told friends that the abundance of gardens and verdure around his house made him feel like a cow. “The idyllic landscape functioned like a Hollywood move set that produced alienation because of its apparent perfection,” wrote Ehrhard Bahr in his study Weimar on the Pacific: German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the Crisis of Modernism.
Others longed for the grit and energy of older cities and the world of drawing room conversation that had surrounded them in European universities. Adorno and Horkheimer were especially disgusted with American pop culture, writing acidly of the day’s cinema idols. “For centuries society has prepared for Victor Mature and Mickey Rooney. They come to fulfill the very individuality they destroy. The heroizing of the average forms part of the cult of cheapness. The highest-paid stars resemble advertisements for unnamed merchandise.”
German presence in L.A. during the 1930s also had a dark side. The local chapter of the pro-Nazi “German American Bund” had a particularly robust chapter here, and some of its members plotted to kidnap Jewish Hollywood executives, use machine guns to slaughter residents in predominately Jewish Boyle Heights and sabotage naval ships in the San Diego harbor. They used the Deutsches Haus restaurant in West Hollywood as an unofficial clubhouse, little knowing that a patriotic lawyer named Leon Lewis was spying on them the whole time — a tale well-told in USC historian Steven Ross’s recent book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hitler-Los-Angeles-Against-Hollywood/dp/1620405628" onclick="__gaTracker('send', 'event', 'outbound-article', 'https://www.amazon.com/Hitler-Los-Angeles-Against-Hollywood/dp/1620405628', 'Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America');">Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America</a>, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Despite the Nazi presence just down the hill, many of the exiles embraced the warm new way of life they found far away from Europe’s darkening skies. Mann could have had his house designed by Richard Neutra, for example, who was eager to give the modernist master a house with a domestic architecture equivalent to his literary style. But Mann expressed contempt for what he described as the “cubist glass-box style,” and snubbed Neutra at L.A.’s German parties. Instead, he gave the contract to Julius R. Davidson who had proposed a more muted version of internationalism, and he and his wife Katia lived for 10 years in the house which he always recollected fondly, telling visitors during his last years in Switzerland that it was “completely my own.”
Mann spent a lot of time in L.A. thinking about democracy and its vulnerabilities, writing a lengthy speech called “The Coming Victory of Democracy” in which he ridiculed “the charm of novelty” presented by fascism. When Mann reluctantly left Pacific Palisades for Switzerland in 1952, it was in response to McCarthyism and what he saw as the weakening of core American values. As it turned out, a <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/double-enmity/" onclick="__gaTracker('send', 'event', 'outbound-article', 'https://www.thenation.com/article/double-enmity/', 'suspicious FBI');">suspicious FBI</a> had been spying on him.
A word often used in descriptions of this California Weimar circle is “unlikely,” which is usually meant to signal the writer’s belief that a bunch of European intellectuals settling in La-La Land is somehow incongruous or even comical. Yet, in many ways, it was entirely logical. Few American cities demonstrated more brio, vitality and hope during the Depression as Los Angeles, and this was the center of the vibrant new artform of cinema where many hoped to find work as producers or writers. The cost of living was far cheaper here than in New York City, the weather was gentle and the city was a relatively tolerant place — compared to the rest of 1930s America — for Jewish refugees who found an established community of co-religionists already in place.
In the same way, it should not be seen as “unlikely” that the German government has stepped into rescue a treasure from the American real-estate meat grinder. With the postwar transatlantic alliance now in mortal jeopardy and in a climate where American sponsorship of global democracy seems to be evaporating, the Germans are well-placed to offer a small piece of localized atonement for historic wrongs, as well as preserve a physical memory of resistance and a reminder of the fragile value of government by the people.
“If you do believe that underneath we all carry around a sense of dignity as humans, then Mann’s call for democracy as the only defense is inspirational, and a reminder that immigrants will always bring vitality and an enriching of culture” said Stephen Lavine, the founding director of the Mann House.
<div class="at-below-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/ascent-mann/"></div>

Ascent of Mann

newport

<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/interviews/wont-keirstead-rouda-bow-open-door-rohrabacher-defeat-ca-48/"></div>Finding the real wishes of the voters is democracy’s ultimate frustration. California thought it might have gotten closer when it instituted the top-two primary system in 2010, to end — or so it was thought — the tendency of both parties to elect the noisiest and most base-juicing candidates. When the winner and runner-up of a nonpartisan primary advance to the general election, it was supposed to promote centrism, moderation and balance — the yogic middle way of politics.
Instead, of course, it has provided the Democratic Party with yet another chance to royally screw themselves in a year when everything should have been going their way. All those idealistic calls for ordinary people to run for office worked too well, and a field crowded with newcomers in a top-two primary means that a Republican who richly deserves political oblivion has a chance to thread their way into a cheap berth in the general election — and possibly win the seat — because the Democrats couldn’t figure out how to unify behind a single candidate and instead scattered their votes like handfuls of birdseed to greedy pigeons.
Such is the worry about California’s District 48, a rectangular slice of beautiful Orange County coastline that takes in a contradictory mélange of high tech-industry, the glass towers of Irvine, the retirees of Leisure World, the tanned rich of Newport Beach, the fiercely liberal artist haven of Laguna Beach and almost the entirety of Huntington Beach — whose culture and politics can often resemble the gulf coast of Alabama. For 30 years, the seat has been the property of Dana Tyrone Rohrabacher, a former Reagan White House aide who raised his initial running money with help from Nicaraguan gun-runner Oliver North.
Despite his anti-Soviet beginnings, Rohrabacher has transformed himself into the most Russia-friendly member of the U.S. Congress, defending the annexation of Crimea and giving the FBI concern that he was the target of Kremlin recruiting and even had a code name among Russian spies. At one point, U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy said of his colleague: &#8220;There&#8217;s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.” He is said to be a person of interest in Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian election interference. He’s also an immigration hawk, thinks climate change is “liberal claptrap,” opposes same-sex marriage, and voted to repeal Obamacare. Except for the Russia stuff, this may have been tolerable and even desirable in the old Orange County when aerospace contracting was the big game and the John Birch Society used to pass out leaflets at Knott’s Berry Farm. But changing demographics and the monumental embarrassment of Donald Trump has turned this conservative stronghold increasingly blue. A former GOP insider named Scott Baugh is running his own campaign for the seat, stealing money and attention away from his onetime ally. In short, Rohrabacher’s vulnerable and wobbling. Any competent Democrat has an excellent shot of laying him to the canvas.
The problem is that two competent Democrats are poised to give Rohrabacher a huge undeserved gift on Tuesday. Businessman Harley Rouda used to be a Republican, but he now has the endorsement of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Stem cell scientist Hans Keirstead, meanwhile, picked up the endorsement of the county Democratic Party. The simple solution would be for one of them to quit the race and hold the door for the other. But neither of them wants to do that. The Los Angeles Review of Books asked them why.
“It would be great if he did drop out,” said Rouda, believing that Keirstead ought to be the one to gracefully concede the race as a unifying gesture. He said no conversation about it has taken place. “It&#8217;d be great if somebody could orchestrate that but based on Keirstead&#8217;s campaign and the rhetoric coming out of there, I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s in the calculus right now.” Rouda said his endorsement by the DCCC proves that he is the unity candidate.
For his part, Keirstead points to an independent poll from Change Research that shows him eight points up on his Democratic opponent. Among all candidates, in this poll, it’s Rohrabacher with 27 percent, Keirstead with 19, Baugh with 17, and Rouda with 11. If Baugh can crack into the moderate swing vote just enough on Tuesday, it’s curtains for the Democrats before the real show even starts.
“The possibility of the Democrats getting blocked out is a real one,” acknowledged Keirstead. “At this point, every other Democrat in this race is a spoiler.”
He said he would not drop out himself because of the poll numbers. “Ever since I got into this race I have always said that if I was in any position but the lead, I would drop out.” But that has not happened. And neither has a conversation with Rouda about who gets to take the one remaining parachute in a plane without a pilot.
“I’ve left him three messages but he never gets back to me,” said Keirstead. He added there would be no doubt in his mind who would be to blame if the Democrats found a way to botch what should have been a golden opportunity.
“If we lose this race, it will be because of the egos of Democrats in second and third place who aren’t dropping out when they should.”
<div class="at-below-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/interviews/wont-keirstead-rouda-bow-open-door-rohrabacher-defeat-ca-48/"></div>

Why Won&#8217;t Keirstead or Rouda Bow Out, Open Door for Rohrabacher Defeat in CA 48?

Do Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad

<h4>Tom Zoellner is the author of five nonfiction books, including Train: Riding the Rails that Created the Modern World. He is the co-author of The New York Times bestselling book An Ordinary Man,&nbsp;and his book Uranium won the 2011 Science Writing Award from the American Institute of Physics. His writing has appeared in Harper’s, The&nbsp;Atlantic, Time,&nbsp;Foreign&nbsp;Policy, Departures, The Wall Street Journal, Men’s Health, the&nbsp;Oxford&nbsp;American, and many other places. An Associate Professor of English at Chapman University, he lives in downtown Los Angeles.</h4>

Tom Zoellner

The Rwanda Myth

"You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to." — Molly Ivins

Politics

Dread and Disunity in Las Vegas: A Report from the Nevada Caucuses

Photo by Aaron Salcido

Lynell George is a Los Angeles based journalist and essayist. Currently an arts and culture columnist for KCET’s Artbound, she has had a long career in LA journalism as staff writer for both the Los Angeles Times and L.A. Weekly — focusing on social issues, human behavior and identity politics as well as visual arts, music and literature. She has taught journalism at Loyola Marymount University and is also a Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities Fellow and a USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Fellow (2013). She is also the author of No Crystal Stair: African Americans in the City of Angels (Verso/Doubleday), a collection of features and essays drawn from her reporting.

Lynell George

Stanton Hall

Richard Thompson

Charles McNulty is a writer and critic in Los Angeles.

Charles McNulty

<h4>Janet Fitch is a Los Angeles native and the author of&nbsp;White Oleander&nbsp;and&nbsp;Paint It Black. Her latest novel is a two-part epic, The Revolution of Marina M. and Chimes of a Lost Cathedral.</h4>

Janet Fitch

<h4>Steve Wasserman, former editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review, is editor-at-large for Yale University Press.</h4>

Steve Wasserman

<h4>Ted Gioia writes on music, books and popular culture. His latest book is The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire.</h4>

Ted Gioia

Andy Hermann

<h4>Joe Donnelly, an award-winning journalist and short-story writer, is currently Assistant Visiting Professor of English and Journalism at Whittier College. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.</h4>

Joe Donnelly

Bill Holdship

Tony Ortega

Tim Appelo

Dean Kuipers writes on the environment, art and politics and is the author of the new memoir, The Deer Camp. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Playboy, the Los Angeles Times, Outside, and many other publications. He lives in Los Angeles.

Dean Kuipers

Alissa Quart

Robert George

Willis Peter Bilderback earned his PhD from the Department of Cinema Studies at New York University, and is the author of The Caveman and the Machine: An Analysis of the American Musical Film, 1929–1935 (2009).

Willis Peter Bilderback

Jeff Turrentine is an&nbsp;environmental journalist based in&nbsp;Brooklyn, NY.

Jeff Turrentine

Dana Gioia is an award-winning poet. Former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Gioia is a native Californian of Italian and Mexican descent. He received a B.A. and a M.B.A. from Stanford University and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University. In 2015 Gioia was appointed the State Poet Laureate of California by Governor Jerry Brown. Gioia has published five full-length collections of poetry, most recently <a href="http://danagioia.com/book/99-poems-new-selected/">99 Poems: New &amp; Selected</a>. His poetry collection, <a href="http://danagioia.com/wp/book/interrogations-at-noon/">Interrogations at Noon</a>, won the 2002 American Book Award. An influential critic as well, Gioia’s 1991 volume <a href="http://danagioia.com/wp/book/can-poetry-matter-essays-on-poetry-and-american-culture/">Can Poetry Matter?</a>, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award, is credited with helping to revive the role of poetry in American public culture. In 2014 he won the Aiken-Taylor Award for lifetime achievement in American poetry. Gioia’s many literary anthologies include Twentieth-Century American Poetry, 100 Great Poets of the English Language, The Longman Anthology of Short Fiction, Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing, and Literature for Life. His poems, translations, essays, and reviews have appeared in many magazines including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Washington Post Book World, The New York Times Book Review, Slate, and The Hudson Review. Gioia has written three opera libretti and is an active translator of poetry from Latin, Italian, and German. In 2011 Gioia became the Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture at the University of Southern California where he teaches each fall semester. In 2015 Gioia was appointed the State Poet Laureate of California by Governor Jerry Brown.

Dana Gioia

Remembering Scott Timberg

"There is only one thing that can kill the Movies, and that is education." — Will Rogers

Film

"Writing only leads to more writing." — Colette

Literary Criticism

"I don't care much about music. What I like is sounds." — Dizzy Gillespie

Music

All About Awe: A Conversation with Peter Heller

"Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't." — Mark Twain

Fiction

Another Heart of the Matter: An Interview with Nii Ayikwei Parkes

"For a long time now I haven't been I."
— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Around the World

What Is Good in Man Is Love: An Interview with Elias Khoury

Doomed to Survive, but Not Live: An Interview with Joumana Haddad

"As far as I'm concerned, being any gender is a drag." — Patti Smith

Gender &amp; Sexuality

Making It in L.A.: An Interview with Joe Donnelly

"The older one grows, the more one likes indecency." — Virginia Woolf

Memoir &amp; Essay

The Hunt for Zodiac

The Serial Killer as a Marketing Genius

"Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history." — George Bernard Shaw

History

"The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter, eh?" — Dashiell Hammett

Noir

Marked, Unmarked, Remembered

Where It Happened: Documenting the American Places We’d Like to Forget

"Art is making something out of nothing and selling it." — Frank Zappa

Art &amp; Architecture

Our Dishonest President

Pulling the Fire Alarm: The “L. A. Times” Editorial Board Versus the Bully-in-Chief

The History of the Future

Above and Below the Fruited Plain: On Edward McPherson’s “The History of the Future”

"Culture is an instrument wielded by professors to manufacture professors." — Simone Weil

Cultural Studies

Tom Zoellner is the author of five nonfiction books, including Train: Riding the Rails that Created the Modern World. He is the co-author of The New York Times bestselling book An Ordinary Man,&nbsp;and his book Uranium won the 2011 Science Writing Award from the American Institute of Physics. His writing has appeared in Harper’s, The&nbsp;Atlantic, Time,&nbsp;Foreign&nbsp;Policy, Departures, The Wall Street Journal, Men’s Health, the&nbsp;Oxford&nbsp;American, and many other places. An Associate Professor of English at Chapman University, he lives in downtown Los Angeles.

Tom Zoellner

EVERYTHING