This important collection of essays on the writers who have made Los Angeles one of the great cities of twentieth-century literature. John Fante, Walter Mosley, and Chester Himes join writers including Aldous Huxley, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Evelyn Waugh, Norman Mailer, Raymond Chandler, and Thomas Pynchon. Essays examine such special Los Angeles genres as the detective story and the Hollywood novel.

A collection of original essays on major Bay Area writers, emphasizing the meaning and importance of landscape, place, and history.