Here’s what some of them had to say about the monumental work and about Davis, who died last year, leaving a legacy that will last as long as the city itself.
But one thing they agreed on - or more than a third of them - was that “City of Quartz,” Mike Davis’ magisterial, obstinate, rigorous and highly entertaining survey of Los Angeles’ self-identity and power structure, belongs in any pantheon worth preserving. Our 95 survey respondents offered a vast array of books, made wildly counter-intuitive arguments and sometimes disputed the entire premise of rankings and genre distinctions. Getting writers to reach consensus is a notoriously tricky proposition. His debut, an upside-down bildungsroman about the rise of Gunnar Kaufman from a Santa Monica scion of sellouts (“the whitest Negro in captivity”) to revolutionary poet doomsday cult leader, earned only one more vote for this list than his fourth novel, “ The Sellout.” “Beatty’s humor is often the top note of discussions about his work,” says Michael Jaime-Becerra, “but settling there ignores the nuanced, wide-ranging social critique, nestled here in Los Angeles, that drives the work forward.” Dana Johnson adds: “He’s surprising and original, always.” - BK No one takes satire farther, higher, lower or deeper than Beatty.
The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty, 1996 At its center is Dix Steele, a sociopathic killer masquerading as a writer, who in the end turns out to be too smart for his own good. Hughes’ novel may be best known for inspiring the 1950 Bogart movie of the same name, but the book is so much better, so much darker. Nothing happens, but the air of menace is so palpable you can feel it in your chest. Has there ever been a more vivid opening in the literature of Los Angeles? A man pursues a woman from a Santa Monica bus stop down the California Incline on a fog-saturated night.
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