Word: essayed
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...ESSAY...
That music -- 140 tracks, including My Happiness and That's When Your Heartaches Begin, the two tunes he cut that day back in 1953, as well as 14 performances never before released -- is available in this hefty, have-to- have-it compilation, which features a scrupulous discography, an excellent essay by critic Peter Guralnick and, in a nod to recent postal madness, a "limited edition" stamp sheet made up of Elvis record covers from the '50s. These stamps are suitable for framing or pasting but not posting, which suits just fine: it's the music that carries the message anyhow...
...virtues of this eclectic collection is that no single impression of the city dominates for too long; Lynell George's "City of Specters," a stark essay on death in Black Los Angeles, serves as a sobering and understated counterpoint to Babitz' exuberant piece. "In junior high school we went to more funerals than weddings," George writes. Her memoir is filled with children for whom the "concept of life has never been more ephemeral...there is not the need nor time to pace and fret over a future that may never...
Another standout in the book is Ruben Martinez' autobiographical "La Placita." Although it appears under the section labelled "God," this essay embraces topics as varied as family history, gang warfare and the Latino immigrant population of L.A. Martinez speaks from his dead grandparents' house, where he contemplates the "strewn shards of [his] identity." The racial and cultural identity of this journalist of Salvadoran ancestry proves as multi-faceted as the city in which he grew up. Memories of Watergate and the Flintstones figure alongside stories of the Chicano movement and assassinated Salvadoran friends in this personal history...
Martinez' essay includes what may be the book's most telling observation on multicultualism in a section on the L.A. Festival, a recent civic celebration which glorified the racial and ethnic make-up of the city in a slightly Disneyesque fashion. He writes...