Writing from California comes to L.A. Thursday through Saturday

On Thursday night, Walter Mosley kicks off the Los Angeles edition of Writing from California, a two-part series separated by four months and 400 miles.

The Los Angeles event is two-plus days of free literary programs -- panels, readings, discussions, even a bus tour -- about the literature of Southern California. It’s taking place at the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles, except for the bus tour, which will follow the paths of Raymond Chandler’s life and fiction through the city. Those who can’t make it can watch the event unfold online on fora.tv.

Writers scheduled to appear at the event include Lisa See, Susan Straight, Luis Rodriguez, Lynell George, Gary Snyder, Richard Rayner and more. The Times’ Hector Tobar and David Ulin are participating; Ulin organized the series with William Deverell, chairman of the History Department at USC and director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

We asked Deverell via email about Writing from California.

Writing from California is a two-part, linked series separated by four months and 400 miles. Have you tried anything else like that before? How will it work?

We have not tried anything like this before. This has been several years in the making, or at least in the thinking. The major idea was to take the pulse of the literary identity and literary themes that help to define California, both historically and in contemporary settings or contemporary writing. The set of themes we have identified allow us, we think, to explore what’s unique about literary expression in the north and in the south but (critically) without devolving to silly Us/Them binaries or SF vs LA/LA vs. SF tensions. Rather, we wanted to highlight different themes and different writers and different histories, while at the same time suggesting similarities or a combined California thrust to literary production in the far West. And we wanted to headquarter these events at the major public libraries of both metropolitan regions.

How will the Los Angeles event be different from the one held in San Francisco?

Different writers, of course, and different themes (with some overlaps, too). Where SF had a poetry thread (in film and in poetry readings), LA has what we’ve called “interludes.” These are four discrete moments where four writers and their “LA-ness” are featured in what amount to be kind of open mike events: Sam Watters on Gertrude Stein; David Kipen on Thomas Pynchon; David Ulin on Joan Didion; me on Carey McWilliams.

Who do you expect or hope will attend?

We are so fortunate to be able to partner with the LA Public Library and the Library Foundation of LA. That makes us a partner with ALOUD, which is, as you know, a cultural gem. So we are expecting everyone who’s ever been to an ALOUD event to come! And anyone interested in the ways in which LA inspires and stymies writers, historically and now. And lots of students.

I understand Judith Freeman and Richard Rayner will be guides on a Raymond Chandler bus tour. Have you taken that tour?

I haven’t done it. But I know the route. It’s designed to show an LA that Chandler knew (peripatetic, ever-wandering Chandler), as well as an LA that readers of Chandler know. So it’s both about him and about the places he carefully placed in his noir fiction. And it will be fun -- a little walking, a little sightseeing, hopefully a gimlet -- orchestrated by two magnificent students of Chandler, noir, and Los Angeles between the wars.

Although the title says Los Angeles, the event includes authors from elsewhere in Southern California – Susan Straight from Riverside, Gustavo Arellano from Orange County. Do you see these as separate spaces -- or separate literary spaces? Do you think it’s more useful to see them as separately, or of one piece?

Great question. Both, I think. We want to honor these magnificent “extra-LA” voices and writers for their acumen and ability to illuminate places beyond LA, but somehow also within “greater LA.” My own eccentric take on this -- far less as a literary thinker and far more as a student of the region -- is that these are writers whose work is both about a greater or bigger LA and about places, cities, and neighborhoods very different, in historical trajectory and contemporary culture, from LA. There’s a chameleon quality to these writers and their work, and we should celebrate that. Just as we need to be cognizant of their willingness or reluctance to be roped in to some LA gyre.

Are there stories from California that you think need to be more widely known?

I’ll defer to discipline here. History. We need to know so much more about the history of the region, the lives shaped by global forces and in turns the lives shaping such forces (and other lives). Fiction’s one portal into greater understanding. That’s in part why these conferences have been such fun and so illuminating (that and the fabulous collaborations at their foundation).

Is it possible that writing from California will be thought of as provincial when we identify it as “writing from California”?

It’s possible. I’m not concerned about it. The power of California writing is self-evident; the remarkable lineages and legacies speak for themselves, and the energy and insight of the current crop of writers north to south is, to my mind, singularly (or at least especially) exciting. As an historian of California, I’ve grown weary of most claims of California exceptionalism. And, at the other end, I’ve grown equally weary of charges of provincialism on the Pacific. I’m far more comfortable arguing that there are exceptional aspects to California’s history and culture, and that the rest of the West, nation, and world ought to recognize and think about such.

Are you planning to hold another Writing from California event or series in the future? Would it follow the same format, or move to different cities, or focus on just one, or...?

I’m entirely open to doing something like this again. My hunch would be that “the West” could easily sustain such a theme, and I’d love to draw insights from SF and LA into that venue or that enterprise. At the same time, we have never believed that writing in California can be easily described by reference only to the Bay Area and LA. Our SF conference did some work in the East Bay, and the LA one, as you note, goes south and east. But there’s Sacramento (Richard Rodriguez, Joan Didion, and William Vollman, e.g.) and the Central Valley (Mas Masumoto, William Saroyan, Steinbeck), and we are cognizant of their astonishing influence and California-ness. So we might think of these as starts? They are great fun -- intellectual fun and playful fun -- lots of work, and formative projects for building collegial ties across institutions, disciplines, regions. Would I work on another one? A bigger one? Yes.

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