Customer Reviews

Bohemian Los Angeles: and the Making of Modern Politics

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From drag queens to communists, Bohemian Los Angeles is full of characters and stories from L.A.'s surprising secret past. As a resident of Silverlake--the hillside neighborhood that provides the focus of this book and which was the epicenter of so much early social activism--I was particularly fascinated to learn about the history under my feet. But I think anyone would be charmed by this nostalgic portrait of a world that has been lost--and yet is the foundation of our own. Congratulations to Daniel Hurewitz for this important and engrossing book!

Hurewitz, a professor of history at Hunter College, shows himself to be not just a scholar but a writer with this fine work. Provocative in subject and evocative, factual yet novelistic in style, "Bohemian Los Angeles" is a singular achievement in gay history. Hurewitz's story comes from reams of archival papers neatly joined with facts based on interviews with many now-deceased members of said B.L.A. We are lucky to have a sympathic and analytic account of this under-reported time in the country's cultural life.

Daniel Hurwitz has written a fascinating history of an unusual slice of life in Los Angeles. His book should be of interest to anyone who likes to read about gay history and urban history. Hurewitz is a graceful writer and a careful historian. He clearly spent a great deal of time digging through little-known archives and interviewing people who were key figures in his story. This is a terrific read!

The Bohemian history of Los Angeles is every bit as interesting and important to the culture and fabric of Los Angeles as its Hollywood history. Daniel Hurewitz has revealed a depth and intelligence to Los Angeles that the city is all too often accused of not having.

Bravo Daniel. This book is a must-read for Los Angeles history enthusiasts and Edendale residents like myself.

The author originally presented his findings in a UCLA dissertation. In the several years intervening he has enlarged his data and refined his ideas. What we have then is a carefully crafted presentation of his case. Hurewitz focuses on the early and middle years of 20th century. Supplementing previous accounts, there is a good deal of information about ordinary gay men that is new.

In my review of Gay L.A. by Faderman and Timmons, a generally excellent book, I faulted the writers for not offering a sufficient explanation for the seemingly improbable fact that America's only enduring gay emancipation movement arose in Los Angeles. Commendably, Hurewitz attempts to resolve this conundrum. Unfortunately, his explanation doesn't work.

He portrays three interdependent spheres of innovation in the Southern California city--the arts community; the political radicals (especially the Communists); and gay men and lesbians.

Ostensibly linked by their sharing the neighborhood of Edendale between Hollywood and downtown LA, Hurewitz' three worlds are not in fact closely connected. While many artists and leftists lived in Edendale in the first half of the twentieth century it did not enjoy the status of a "gay village" until recent decades, when it became known as Silver Lake and Echo Park.

A number of the founders of the Mattachine Society had also been Communists, but this fact, while true, is not enough to justify the triple project. The reason Mattachine survived and prospered was because after its reorganization in 1953 (a change much lamented by today's nostalgic leftists) it was led by individuals who were centrists.

Over this book there is a haze of the Romance of American Communism, to cite the title of a gushing book by Vivian Gornick. These people were working to establish a Soviet system in America. Had they succeeded in doing so, "degenerates" would have been sent to Gulags.

Those who sugarcoat this leftist history instruct us to forget about international politics. Instead, just look at the rewarding personal lives these Communists lived! Regrettably this picture wasn't rosy either. When one joined the Party one was urged to devote all one's free time as much as possible to working for the Revolution. There were no "free weekends." Just as with a religious sect, members were encouraged to marry within the Party. This meant severing one's previous ties. After this pattern was set, members were discouraged from leaving because they knew that if they did no they would be ostracized. They would end up with no friends at all.

As noted, the linkage of the three phenomena is elusive. If there was an L.A. Bohemia, this wasn't it.

Hurewitz makes much of the matter of identity. Yet this was not an issue during the period he mainly covers. Gay identity (and other purported identities) became important only in the seventies. The legacy of this concept has been scarcely benign. The perception of Balkanization, appealing to separate interest groups rather than the national interest, continues to haunt the Democratic Party. Hurewitz further believes that Los Angeles was the crucible in which the identity principle advanced to be part of the national agenda. This claim, which ignores the crucial effect of the civil rights movement in the South, is specious.

In short this book is good in parts. Yet in my view its overall claim fails.