NONFICTION - April 21, 1991

IN SEARCH OF . . . LITERARY L.A. by Lionel Rolfe (California Classics: $11.95, paper; 180 pp.). The literary scene in Los Angeles is neither as vital nor as visible as it should be, so any book that celebrates local book writers is welcome. The trouble with “In Search of . . . Literary L.A.,” an updated edition of a book first published a decade ago, is that it’s too much search and not enough discovery; only a few authors--Upton Sinclair, Aldous Huxley and Thomas Mann among them--receive extended treatment, and in many places, the presence of author Lionel Rolfe grows tiresome. He’s probably correct, for example, in saying that L.A. literature has evolved from bohemianism to apocalyptic vision, but he hardly bothers to make the argument--it’s left as bare assertion. Readers should be warned, too, that although Raymond Chandler, John Fante, Louis Adamic, Carl Sandburg and others have been “added” to the updated edition, according to the back jacket, Rolfe deals with many of them in just a few sentences; they don’t even merit inclusion in the book’s index.