In 1965, the New Yorker published a series of articles on Los Angeles by “far-flung correspondent” Christopher Rand, then known by the magazine’s readers for his dispatches from other such exotic locales as Greece, India, Hong Kong, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Two years later, these became the book “Los Angeles: The Ultimate City,” which, despite its age, I often recommend to friends looking to understand the place. Very few to whom I mention the title have heard it before, and Rand himself, who passed in 1968, rings a faint bell at best, even to other New Yorker writers. “He was a man of intense curiosity and strong perceptive powers, whose writing showed the results of a quest for understanding through the amassing of relevant detail,” reads Rand’s obituary in the magazine, which adds, “he once walked a hundred miles over rough Himalayan terrain in two days.” When this highly skilled and now unjustly forgotten writer of place came to seek his own thorough understanding of Los Angeles almost half a century ago, he set up base camp in Sawtelle, a small west-side neighborhood centered on that boulevard between Olympic and Santa Monica.
“The place is a dozen miles west of Little Tokyo, toward the ocean, and it has been a satellite Japanese quarter since the thirties at least,” Rand explains. “Japanese truck-gardeners and nurserymen moved out there from Little Tokyo because the land was cheap, being mostly open country then, and the weather was good for growing.” Though not enthralled by all Los Angeles has, sometimes aggressively, to offer — but clearly always fascinated by it — the writer takes pleasure in this neighborhood he makes his temporary home. “In July the Japanese Buddhist Church of Sawtelle put on a fair to celebrate the festival Obon,” he writes, with a quaintly touching use of use of italics. “The fair was complete with paper lanterns and scores of kimono’d women dancing old Japanese dances; it also had food-stalls, and Mexican tacos were sold there along with Japanese delicacies like sushi and chicken teriyaki. Mexicans of all ages came to it, too, as did several Anglos or Caucasians, and an air of intercultural friendliness prevailed.”
Read the whole thing at KCET Departures.
Post a Comment