LITERARY L.A.

by Lionel Rolfe

Expanded From the Original Classic & Featuring the Coffeehouse Scene Then and Now
224 pages, paperback
$14.95
ISBN 1-879395-22-3
Publication Date: February, 2002

In Literary L.A., Rolfe writes about the tradition of great  independent Los Angeles bookstores such as Papa Bach and Skylight's ancestor, Chatterton's.

Now in its third edition, Literary L.A. was originally published in 1981 by Chronicle Books in San Francisco. A revised edition, In Search of Literary L.A., appeared ten years later. To mark the millennium, California Classics Books has expanded the classic study, with new emphasis on the bohemian and apocalyptic streams in Los Angeles writing, and including additional chapters by John Ahouse,  "Curator of American Literature" at USC's Doheny Library, and L.A. poet Julia Stein.

Literary L.A.-- the book and the city --  is a rich blend of diverse strands and contrasting textures. Those who helped to weave this literary tapestry were -- like many who wound up being representative of Los Angeles -- often transients: literary gypsies in imposed or self-imposed exile.

Among the literary figures discussed in this latest edition of Literary L.A. are Oscar Zeta Acosta, Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller, Ken Kesey, Carey McWilliams, Charles Lummis, Jacob Zeitlin, Louis Adamic, Nathaniel West, Robinson Jeffers, Malcolm Lowry, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Upton Sinclair, John Steinbeck, Aldous Huxley, Jack London, Theodore Dreiser, and many others.

California Classics Books is that anomaly in Los Angeles -- a Los Angeles-based general interest publisher with a focus on the intellectual, literary, and social history of Southern California. For more than ten years it has steadfastly produced titles such as Literary L.A., Being Frank: My Time with Frank Zappa (by Nigey Lennon), and other provocative books which present a side of Los Angeles that other writers and publishers rarely dare to approach. The California Classics title Bread and Hyacinths: The Rise and Fall of Utopian Los Angeles, written by Lionel Rolfe, Nigey Lennon and Paul Greenstein, was recently sold to Paul Haggis Productions, producer of television's "Family Law" and "Thirtysomething."  A miniseries is planned for broadcast on national cable television.


LIONEL ROLFE'S BIOGRAPHY
 
Journalist and author Lionel Rolfe grew up in European-influenced surroundings in Los Angeles. Through the early postwar years, his mother, the late pianist Yaltah Menuhin, hosted at an-home salon that offered a solace for musicians and other creative artists-in-exile. Much of what Rolfe writes has its roots in his own childhood impressions or the recollections of family members and visitors to his boyhood home.

Lionel Rolfe's books define the mecca that is Los Angeles culture. He is the author of Fat Man on the Left: Four Decades in the Underground, In Search of Literary L.A. and now a third edition of Literary L.A.
 
He also co-authored Bread and Hyacinths: The Rise and Fall of Utopian Los Angeles, which has been purchased for a television miniseries. Various writings were anthologized in Unknown California, Classic and Contemporary Writing on California Culture, Society, And Politics (Macmillan 1985), and On Bohemia: The Code of the Self-Exiled (Transaction/Rutgers 1990).In 1999 he wrote an ebook, Death and Redemption in London & L.A., for the online publishers deadendstreet com.

His newspaper and magazine writings are housed in the American Literature Collection at the University of Southern California's Doheny Library.
It can be accessed on the Web at: http://www.usc.edu/isd/locations/ssh/special/Rolfe.html

Rolfe was born in 1942 in Medford, Oregon, but grew up in Los Angeles on the West Side and in Long Beach, later attending Los Angeles City College and California State University, Los Angeles.

His father, Benjamin Lionel Rolfe, was an attorney and Workers' Compensation Appeals Court Judge; his mother Yaltah was a concert pianist and the sister of the famed violinist-prodigy Yehudi Menuhin.

Early memories of his musical household were enhanced by extended visits to the home of his maternal grandparents in Los Gatos, California. This led to a preoccupation with the Menuhin dynasty, which became the subject of his first book, The Menuhins: A Family Odyssey, in 1978, casting enough light into dark corners to leave behind an estrangement between the nephew and his celebrated uncle which never fully healed.

Meanwhile Rolfe became a journeyman writing for outlying papers in Pismo Beach, Turlock, and Newhall, before returning to L.A. where in the late 60s he had stint with Los Angeles Free Press when it was still the counterculture paper-of-record.

Rolfe's abiding interest in the bohemian world carries forward from the "Freep" and the residual coffeehouse culture of the 70s. He later worked as a police beat reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle and an editor at Psychology Today.

Of greater permanence was the work Rolfe did at the end of the 70s for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. Writing regular feature articles for the Sunday magazine, he amassed a sizable file on the lives of bygone California authors, which later appeared in book form as his Literary L.A., published by Chronicle Books in 1981. An alternative weekly, the L.A. Reader, was also home to lengthy investigative articles on political and cultural figures, as well as such favorite Rolfe topics as railroads and bookstores. Later in the '80s, and "still wrestling with his Jewish identity," Rolfe wrote syndicated articles for Israel Today and became editor of the city's second oldest newspaper, the B'nai B'rith Messenger.

For the last several years he has been an editor and reporter for City News Service, a Los Angeles wire service.

His life and exploits have been profiled in the Los Angeles Times Magazine and other periodicals.

It was in the early 90s that Rolfe co-researched and co-wrote Bread and Hyacinths: The Rise and Fall of Utopian Los Angeles, on turn-of-the-century urban politics and the life of Socialist politician Job Harriman. That is the book that has been optioned for a television miniseries.

With his wife Nigey Lennon, he went into publishing under the imprint "California Classic Books.

His 1998 book, Fat Man on the Left: Four Decades in the Underground, came out of a period when he was writing op-ed pieces for the San Francisco Chronicle and other papers. One of them was about Rush Limbaugh, and it was called I'm the Fat Man on the Left. The book was an anthology of favorite essays and portraits, expanded into a retrospective of his work to date.

BOOKS | FAT MAN ON THE LEFT | THE ELSON MALL | EMAIL

Contacts: Victoria Berding,(323) 906-0262 for California Classics;
Kerry Slattery for Skylight Books, (323)660-1175

LITERARY L.A.