Spend an evening immersed in the dark side of LA. Judith Freeman and Denise Hamilton discuss the birthplace of noir as seen through their new books, Freeman's The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved, and Hamilton's Los Angeles Noir. Free at the Glendale Public Library, Wednesday March 19 at 7:00 pm.
Freeman and Hamilton have added their names to the long list of LA-based writers who understand both the hope and the dark horror inspired by the City of Angels.
In Judith Freeman's compelling, wholly original book, The Long Embrace, she examines vestiges of the Los Angeles that was the inspiration for Chandler's imagination. She also uncovers the life of Cissy Pascal, the older, twice-divorced woman Chandler married in 1924, who would play an essential role in how he came to understand his female characters and Marlowe's relation to them.
Los Angeles Noir, edited by Glendale author Denise Hamilton, is a collection comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within LA.
Recently, a friend of mine was visiting New York City. While there, he wanted me to do some research for him. He wanted to know if there were any literary walking tours in NYC related to the works of Herman Melville. No matter that he is an English Literature professor--he is a HUGE Melville fan.
It then got me to thinking about whether there are any such tours in and around the LA area. And indeed, there are. I searched around Google and came up with two recent articles that discuss several tours that are available for the literary-minded. Esotouric will take you into the "secret heart of LA" as seen through the eyes of writers like Raymond Chandler, John Fante, Charles Bukowski, and Reyner Banham. Most of the tours are actually bus tours with a bit of walking thrown in on a few of them. But hey, this is LA--does anyone actually walk here?The article from the LA Times is here. An article from the travel blog World Hum is here.
Want to read and discuss a book before you go on a tour? Check out the blog nobodyreadsinla. According to their blog, Nobody Reads in LA is a loose-knit group of individuals striving to create a stronger cultural, literary and historical sense of downtown Los Angeles.Of course you can always stop in into the library as well. We have all the modern classics by the authors mentioned above plus much more. Put on your walking shoes and get going!
There are a few big name authors this week, two of them with the same very big name for adventure lovers, in fact. But the biggest Los Angeles name of all was born this week, Raymond Chandler, the creator of hardboiled detective Phillip Marlowe. Marlowe first appeared in stories, then novels by Chandler, and was played on screen in several famous movies, some of them scripted by Chandler. 
From Contemporary Authors Online, available to Glendale Library cardholders through our Online Resources database called Biography Resource Center: Like Gardner and Hammett before him, Chandler drew on the irony of California's status as the Golden State and used the setting to suggest the beguiling and corruptive power of money in American life. Ultimately, Chandler presented a more provocative Los Angeles than had any of his predecessors. Nation contributor Thomas S. Reck called Chandler "the Los Angeles laureate," adding that "no city lends itself more to metaphor than Los Angeles, and no writer has risen to the implicit challenge better." 
This Week's Question: What is the name of the of the substance or process that provides happiness in Aldous Huxley's 1932 classic Brave New World. To whom does it really provide happiness and how close are we to it today?Answer to Last Week's Question: Hunter S. Thompson used factual interviews and personal experiences in a fictional setting thus driving his version of the truth wildly but insistently in a stronger fashion which was dubbed "gonzo journalism" by others. He later titled some of his own works The Gonzo Papers.
In Judith Freeman's compelling, wholly original book, The Long Embrace, she examines vestiges of the Los Angeles that was the inspiration for Chandler's imagination. She also uncovers the life of Cissy Pascal, the older, twice-divorced woman Chandler married in 1924, who would play an essential role in how he came to understand his female characters and Marlowe's relation to them.
Los Angeles Noir, edited by Glendale author Denise Hamilton, is a collection comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within LA.
