Letters to the Editor: A more balanced look at Mike Davis’ doomsaying on L.A.
A view of the 2018 version of “City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles” by Mike Davis, originally published in 1990.
(Verso Books)
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To the editor: Gustavo Arellano’s adulatory column on “prophet” Mike Davis is exactly what you’d expect from someone guaranteed to buy into the most dystopian takes on our benighted city.
So I doubt that Arellano ever read the blistering takedown of Davis’ magnum opus, “City of Quartz,” by former Times columnist and critic Christopher Hawthorne back in 2011.
Hawthorne derided the book as, among other shortcomings, “overwritten and shamelessly hyperbolic,” “in desperate need of ... fact-checking,” “sour where it is not curdled” and “densely packed with self-regard.”
To be fair, it’s not an entirely negative review. But it at least has the virtue of balance, something Arellano cannot muster.
Jeff Schultz, Los Angeles
