D. J. Waldie

Describing childhood in suburban California, a poignant portrait of growing up in the grid of tract houses and carefully measured streets illustrates the good, the bad, and the difficulties found in being ordinary.

Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir

Julian Smith

Jennet Conant

Ishmael Reed

Julia Flynn Siler

Naomi Hirahara

Jane Hirshfield

Mark Wallace

Doug Peacock

Lydia Lee

Joseph Giovannini

Désirée Zamorano

Laura Fraser

Joy Lanzendorfer

Santi Elijah Holley

Monica Corcoran Harel

Jessica Klein

Robert Ito

Adam Mayer

Emma Pratt

Ky-Phong Tran

Matt Twombly

Jessica Zack

The Gimme Shelter Issue

Alta Journal Issue 24

Best-selling author and beloved chronicler of Los Angeles D.J. Waldie reconsiders the city in a collection of contemporary essays. Nobody sees Los Angeles with more eloquence than D. J. Waldie. - Susan Brenneman, Los Angeles Times Deputy Op-Ed Editor Becoming Los Angeles, a new collection by the author of the acclaimed memoir Holy Land, blends history, memory, and critical analysis to illuminate how Angelenos have seen themselves and their city. Waldie's particular concern is commonplace Los Angeles, whose rhythms of daily life are set against the gaudy backdrop of historical myth and Hollywood illusion. It's through sacred ordinariness that Waldie experiences the city's seasons. In his exploration of sprawling Los Angeles, he considers how the city's image was constructed and how it fostered willful amnesia about the city's conflicted past. He encounters the immigrants and exiles, the dreamers and con artists, the celebrated and forgotten who became Los Angeles. He measures the place of nature in the city and the different ways that nature has been defined. He maps on the contours of Los Angeles what embracing--or rejecting--an Angeleno identity has come to mean. Becoming Los Angelesdraws on a decade of Waldie's writing about the intersection of the city's history and its aspirations. He asks, what do we talk about when we talk about Los Angeles today? In a global, cosmopolitan city, is there value in cultivating a local imagination? And he wonders how to describe a city that is denser and more polarized and challenged by climate change, homelessness, and economic disparity. There will always be romance in the idea of Los Angeles, but it requires renewed hope to sustain. Becoming Los Angelesis a further account of how Waldie gained a sense of place, which James Mustich, author of 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die, described as "an almost sacramental act of attention." Becoming Los Angelesis ultimately a book about learning how to fall in love with wherever it is you are. Called a writer whose work is a "gorgeous distillation of architectural and social history" by the New York Times, whose essays and memoirs, said the Los Angeles Times, "conjure the idiosyncratic splendor of Southern California life," D. J. Waldieis the author of the acclaimed Holy Land: A Suburban Memoirand other books that illuminate the ordinary and the everyday in lyrical prose. In collaboration with Diane Keaton, Waldie provided the text for two photographic explorations of home: California Romantica, dealing with homes in the Spanish Colonial Revival Style of the early twentieth century, and House, examining post-modern interpretations of domesticity. California Romanticabecame a Los Angeles Times non-fiction bestseller in 2007. D. J. Waldie's narratives about suburban life have appeared in BUZZ, The Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Georgetown Review, Salon, dwell, Los Angeles Magazine, Spiritus, Gulf Coast, Urbanisme, Bauwelt,and other publications. His book reviews and commentary have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. He lives in the home where he was born in Lakewood, California, where he was formerly the Deputy City Manager.

Myth, Memory, and a Sense of Place

Becoming Los Angeles

Diane Keaton

A luxurious, graphically compelling vision for contemporary domestic living, as observed and artfully presented by the Oscar-winning film star. Keaton's stunning portrayal of rusticated, reimagined, or repurposed spaces across the country shows how inventive designers have brought their talents to bear upon the surface of neglect and decay.

House

D. J. Waldie

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