Michael Doyle

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Michael Doyle rated a book 3 of 5 stars

LOS ANGELES
by David Rieff

read in March, 2013

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I can't believe it took me 20 years to read this book and the biggest takeaway I've got is, "You really are Susan Sontag's son, aren't you?" This *was* an interesting read. But it was also gratuitously simplistic and polemical.

Rieff's by-now familiar...more I can't believe it took me 20 years to read this book and the biggest takeaway I've got is, "You really are Susan Sontag's son, aren't you?" This *was* an interesting read. But it was also gratuitously simplistic and polemical.

Rieff's by-now familiar point is that white people in Southern California at the end of the 20th century remained willfully ignorant about their enormous reliance on immigrant labor and on the ongoing demographic change of Los Angeles into a plurality-immigrant city.

To get there, he starts off by criticizing his New York friends for being unable to speak of L.A. without deriding and stereotyping the city. Then he spends half the book hanging out with his very upper-middle-class, white Los Angeles friends and ends up drawing his own derisive stereotypes about the city--not the least of which is the laughable idea that his moneyed, pampered, privileged Westside friends somehow represent the average white Los Angeles resident. He criticizes them for not being able to accept Latino Angelenos--especially their own maids and gardeners--as fellow human beings. Yet in doing so, he makes it seem pretty clear that he, himself, doesn't know many people of lesser means than these whom he's criticizing.

He eventually makes it to the Eastside to basically see how the other half lives. But for all the great import he gives--as did many 1990s reviewers--to his "discovery" of demographic change in L.A., it's amazing to note that he never seems to notice the ethnic diversity in his NYC hometown. He has to travel 3,000 miles to discover some rich white people don't take poor Latinos seriously. Not for nothing, but he could have simply left the Upper West Side and crossed the 59th Street Bridge into Queens or 155th Street into Washington Heights to learn the same thing.

____

UPDATE: So now that I've made it all the way to the end, I have three more brief observations:

1. Reiff repeats himself so many times in the final 150 pages, there's probably only about 50 pages of real content there.

2. It's *VERY* hard to swallow that after 300 pages of scathingly criticizing the entirety of white Los Angeles, at the very end he claims his point to be that we must all love each other.

3. What a schmuck.(less)

Michael Doyle rated a book 2 of 5 stars

City of Angles: A Drive-By Portrait of Los Angeles
by Al Martinez

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I was looking for a few good, edgy, interesting books to together give me a picture of urban life over time in Los Angeles and this was one of them. (I've read several before, many years ago when I was in urban planning school, so this was kind of fi...more

Michael Doyle rated a book 5 of 5 stars

Making Time: Essays on the Nature of Los Angeles
by William L. Fox

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I was looking for a few good, edgy, interesting books to together give me a picture of urban life over time in Los Angeles and this was one of them. (I've read several before, many years ago when I was in urban planning school, so this was kind of fi...more

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Reinventing Los Angeles by Robert Gottlieb

Reinventing Los Angeles: Nature and Community in the Global City
by Robert Gottlieb

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The Hollywood Sign: Fantasy and Reality of an American Icon
by Leo Braudy

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The Disneyland Encyclopedia by Chris Strodder

The Disneyland Encyclopedia: The Unofficial, Unauthorized, and Unprecedented History of Every Land, Attraction, Restaurant, Shop, and Major Event in the Original Magic Kingdom
by Chris Strodder

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City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles
by Mike Davis

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The Way Into Jewish Prayer
by Lawrence A. Hoffman

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Michael Doyle rated a book 5 of 5 stars

Entering the High Holy Days by Reuven Hammer

Entering the High Holy Days: A Complete Guide to the History, Prayers and Themes
by Reuven Hammer

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Michael Doyle is now friends with Antonio Vasquez
May 10, 2013 01:42pm · like
Michael Doyle rated a book 3 of 5 stars LOS ANGELES by David Rieff read in March, 2013	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I can't believe it took me 20 years to read this book and the biggest takeaway I've got is, "You really are Susan Sontag's son, aren't you?" This was an interesting read. But it was also gratuitously simplistic and polemical. Rieff's by-now familiar...more
Apr 08, 2013 04:10pm · see review
Michael Doyle rated a book 2 of 5 stars City of Angles: A Drive-By Portrait of Los Angeles by Al Martinez	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I was looking for a few good, edgy, interesting books to together give me a picture of urban life over time in Los Angeles and this was one of them. (I've read several before, many years ago when I was in urban planning school, so this was kind of fi...more
Mar 31, 2013 07:45pm · see review
Michael Doyle rated a book 5 of 5 stars Making Time: Essays on the Nature of Los Angeles by William L. Fox	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I was looking for a few good, edgy, interesting books to together give me a picture of urban life over time in Los Angeles and this was one of them. (I've read several before, many years ago when I was in urban planning school, so this was kind of fi...more
Mar 31, 2013 07:34pm · see review
Michael Doyle is currently reading Reinventing Los Angeles: Nature and Community in the Global City by Robert Gottlieb	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Mar 31, 2013 06:57pm
Michael Doyle wants to read The Hollywood Sign: Fantasy and Reality of an American Icon by Leo Braudy	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Mar 31, 2013 06:57pm
Michael Doyle wants to read The Disneyland Encyclopedia: The Unofficial, Unauthorized, and Unprecedented History of Every Land, Attraction, Restaurant, Shop, and Major Event in the Original Magic Kingdom by Chris Strodder	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Mar 31, 2013 06:56pm
Michael Doyle wants to read City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles by Mike Davis	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Mar 31, 2013 06:56pm
Michael Doyle wants to read The Way Into Jewish Prayer by Lawrence A. Hoffman	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Mar 31, 2013 06:50pm
Michael Doyle rated a book 5 of 5 stars Entering the High Holy Days: A Complete Guide to the History, Prayers and Themes by Reuven Hammer	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Mar 31, 2013 06:50pm

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