SEX, DEATH AND GOD IN L.A. ...

SEX, DEATH AND GOD IN L.A. edited by David Reid (UC Press: $13.; 383 pp.). Ethnically, geographically and economically diverse, Los Angeles is a singularly difficult city to characterize, as the eclectic and uneven essays in this anthology demonstrate. Mike Davis offers a revealing look at the “rust belt” of the city, where heavy industry flourished only a few years ago. Ruben Martinez captures the mood of contemporary L.A. when he describes his journal as “an attempt to gather together the strewn shards of my identity scattered like beads of broken glass across the Golden State Freeway. . . .” Alexander Cockburn and David Reid strive for illuminating turns of phrase, but the reader is more aware of effort expended than the result; Carolyn See strains to portray her divorces as a metaphor for the shifting ethnic balance of the city. The fictionalized peeks inside the film business are just silly: In L.A., truth is stranger than docudrama.