NONFICTION - April 7, 1996

CITY OF ANGLES: A Drive-By Portrait of Los Angeles by Al Martinez (St. Martin’s: $19.95; 159 pp.). The way it feels to live in Los Angeles is completely dependent on who you are and what part of the city you call home. We all went through the fires, floods, earthquakes and civil unrest of the past few years, yet for obvious reasons, each event affected individuals in profoundly different ways. Al Martinez, a veteran columnist for the Los Angeles Times, has a very specific vision of L.A. Either you recognize it or you don’t. For people who have never been to Los Angeles, the same rule applies on a stylistic level--either you like the way Martinez writes or you don’t.

“City of Angles” is a good-natured, meandering sort of book that reads a bit like a cross between Raymond Chandler and Erma Bombeck. It is a verbal photograph of a city that is changing so fast that by the time the film is developed, the picture already seems quaint.