LA Shorts [Paperback]

Steven Gilbar (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2000

Some of the best writing in America is coming out of Southern California as is evidenced in this first-ever collection of short fiction from Los Angeles. Among the two dozen stories featured here are those by well-known voices such as Ethan Canin, Walter Mosely, and Kate Braverman, as well as those by emerging writers such as Ty Pak, Sandra Tsing Loh, and Karen E. Bender. Edgy and intense, provocative and poignant, LA Shorts is destined to open readers' eyes to a literature of the real place.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A more truthful representation of contemporary LA life than any Big Important Los Angeles Novel - a West Coast Bonfire of the Vanitites..." -- New Times Los Angeles

"A wildly diverse and vivid portrait of the City of Angels" -- Publishers Weekly

"Celebrates a literature both rich and surprising,...as varied in tone, technique, and vision as the people who inhabit that exotic conglomerate of a city." -- T. Coraghessan Boyle

"LA Shorts presents the national literature of a state of mind, richer and more various than those of half the countries of the earth." -- Michael Chabon

About the Author

Steven Gilbar is the editor of numerous anthologies about California, including California Shorts (Heyday Books, 1999). Other collections include Natural State: A Literary Anthology of California Nature Writing (University of California Press), Santa Barbara Stories and Red Tiles, Blue Skies: More Tales of Santa Barbara from Adobe Days to Present Days (John Daniel and Company), and Reading in Bed: Personal Essays on the Glories of Reading (David R. Godine).

Product Details

• Paperback: 278 pages
• Publisher: Heyday Books; 1st edition (April 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1890771295
• ISBN-13: 978-1890771294
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,183,096 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Complex City of Angels, October 5, 2002

By 

Daniel Olivas (West Hills, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: LA Shorts (Paperback)

Bravo to Steven Gilbar for collecting these varied, poignant and hilarious stories about the vast and complex City of Los Angeles. We get a taste of many cultures with protagonists spread from Van Nuys to Hollywood, from Beverly Hills to El Segundo, from Malibu to Long Beach, and on and on. There are stories here by Yxta Maya Murray, Walter Mosely, Ty Pak, Kate Braverman, Bernard Cooper, and more. For those of us who live in this great city, this collection will reaffirm the dazzling variety that makes up Los Angeles. And for those who don't know this city, this book will disabuse them of the cliches they've accumulated through the years.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars California Dreamin bout the City of Lost Angels~, November 18, 2002

By 

*Q* "rusty spurs" - See all my reviews

This review is from: LA Shorts (Paperback)

Reading these short stories is like being a fly on a Hollywood Blvd. Coffee Shop wall, or perhaps even a lost Angel sitting on a freeway overpass. This is a compilation of short quick stories by various writers.
As a former Californian growing up just north of Hollywood, I had to read this book and so glad I did! What fun this is to get the various tidbits and glimpses into the diversity and choas that is California.
While enjoying these stories I felt like I was right there, driving along Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu and stopping along the way in Trancas to grab some breakfast and eavesdroping on the fasinating conversations swirling around the room or watching the assorted characters coming and going.
Each writer brings his or her own California experience to the page from the gang member to the foreigner or the wannabe to the eccentric, all dealing with the smog, traffic and the surrealistic reality that is California.
If you've never been to California, you will come away with an insider's look into one of the most diverse States in this Country told by some of the most gifted writers around telling it like it is.

5.0 out of 5 stars A Comprehensive Way to understanding LA, November 1, 2000

By 

Karen Finell (Santa Barbara, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: LA Shorts (Paperback)

I started with the last story, The Spells of Ordinary Twilight (for a class on grief I am going to teach), and was moved by content and style to read on. I became engrossed by Eternal Love, and sat happily waiting for more than an hour in my doctor's waiting room, reading this story about two retarded young people, and how this relates with the story of the girl's parents. Having had a handicapped daughter, I could only nod and feel every emotion along with the characters of the story. From there to: Stupid Girl. Here I was not being able to put the story down. Then there is Night Sky and the wonderfully observed immigrant' story: The Palace of Marriage. All of the stories have merit, the list is long. The characterization is true, the language always appropriate to the story, always real. The writers are equally talented in their use of metaphor and simili, and their observations ring true. The stories, one after the other, capture different elements of LA, from the would-be screenwriter to the Russian immigrant to the jilted woman with emotional ties to a man with Aids. They take place in LA and are typical for that city, but as they touch the human heart, they are also larger than the city in which they play, they are universal stories, everyone, anywhere should read.