Everything Now

April 15, 2021
Ruminations on the capital of the 21st century. Los Angeles, at the center of the tectonically, culturally, and financially hyperactive Pacific Rim, has displaced New York as a place of innovation, change, and multicultural encounter. "It is enormously ambiguous," writes Baldwin, to say nothing of being enormous: LA is not so much a city as an agglomeration of 88 cities, with a larger population than 40 of the 50 states and an economy that overshadows the GDP of most nations. Early on, Baldwin, a relative newcomer, admits that "I'm a little indifferent as to whether what I put down here has been thought by somebody before me, because it seems so likely; if anything, the deeper my research and reporting went, the greater my appreciation grew for others' confessions." Indeed, there's not much new in these pages, which tend to the aridly bookish without the charm and good humor of the author's entertaining Paris, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down (2012). At one point, Baldwin quotes or cites three books in a mere 12 lines, which is at least intellectually honest: He's not presenting anyone else's thoughts as his own, an unusual bit of purity in the bricolage culture of Hollywood. On that note, the author is at his best when he tests commonly accepted tropes ("So Hollywood was and wasn't 'Hollywood, ' and Los Angeles was and wasn't 'Hollywood, ' and these things got confused") and finds many wanting. The narrative takes on topical urgency when it addresses issues of racial and social justice: the steady decline in opportunity for minorities, the steady expansion of skid row, the steady militarization of the metropolitan police, which pretty well invented the SWAT team. Baldwin is worth reading on all those scores but only after one has ingested the works of Mike Davis, Reyner Banham, Gustavo Arellano, Joan Didion, David Ulin, and others. A footnote to larger and more in-depth portraits of the City of Angels, though not without merit.

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April 19, 2021
Novelist and essayist Baldwin (Paris, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down) delivers a witty and imaginative survey of contemporary L.A. With a population of more than 10 million, greater L.A. “is less a metropolis than an eighty-eight-city nation state,” according to Baldwin, who explores the region’s “relationship to its citizens” by attending a Mastery in Transformational Training Workshop, where “the biggest epiphanies were still one course away”; accompanying aid workers as they scout migrant trails near the Mexican border; and spending time in the 50-block area of downtown L.A. known as “Skid Row.” He also interviews city residents, including a labor trafficking victim who was rescued by the FBI and Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer Marleen Martinez Sundgaard, whose migrant farmer parents “made her go out into the fields at a young age... to know her family’s sacrifices.” Throughout, Baldwin shares eye-opening statistics (80% of children enrolled in the L.A. Unified School District live below the poverty line) and weaves in colorful historical snippets and reflections on the city from writers including Héctor Tobar, Joan Didion, and Octavia Butler. This multifaceted, openhearted account reveals L.A. as a “shifting mosaic of human potential” unlike any other place in the world. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc.

May 1, 2021
After moving to Los Angeles in 2014, novelist Baldwin (The Last Kid on the Left, 2017) sought to understand how this area became a contemporary city-state. Throughout this essay collection, he explores the history and make-up of this urban sprawl through interviews with fascinating and bizarre locals and draws on such L.A. luminaries as Joan Didion, Octavia Butler, and Jonathan Gold. Each essay circles around a theme, which he pursues on many tangents. In the first piece, which resembles John Jeremiah Sullivan's nonfiction, Baldwin glibly describes his experience in one of L.A.'s many dubious programs promising self-enlightenment. He also considers the violence that has defined the area from its founding to the recent imprisonment of migrants. After discussing Hollywood, Baldwin mesmerically captures the horrors of recent forest fires and the 2018 mudslides, events that have scarred the landscape and its residents. In the final section, perhaps the strongest, Baldwin looks at the tragic and inexcusable inequality that divides L.A. Full of surprising facts and anecdotes, this is a compelling, thoroughly researched, and lovingly crafted chronicle of how Los Angeles came to be.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

July 16, 2021

Baldwin (Paris, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down) offers up a nonfiction work with the premise that Los Angeles should be considered a modern city-state. Chapters are organized into lessons about the nature of the city and its inhabitants, based on the author's personal experience, his interviews with other Angelenos, and notable or famous quotes about LA. Baldwin presents anecdotes of the city's famous and ordinary residents throughout the years (concentrating especially on the 21st century), while also bringing some of the city's neighborhoods into clear focus. The writing is engaging, and the author argues for the city-state label in a variety of ways, but the book seems like a rather disjointed series of essays and quotes that happen to have a loose association to Los Angeles and its surroundings. The somewhat sprawling narrative takes detours to explore LA's relation to California in general, and the wide-ranging effects of the city's ongoing gentrification and its impact on Black and Latinx residents. VERDICT Was the city-state argument convincing? Unfortunately, no. Was the book interesting to read? Undoubtedly, yes. This book would appeal to readers who enjoy narrative nonfiction, essays, or life in Los Angeles.--Crystal Goldman, Univ. of California, San Diego Lib.

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