Signal Hill [Paperback]

Alan Rifkin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2003

Five stories track boys and men as they navigate among the ghosts and mirages of greater Los Angeles. Rifkin’s male protagonists are part fuck-up, part primal force, and full of longing—for fathers, for mothers, for sex, for faith, for just getting it right.

A one-time actor staggers toward his demise and clings to a ledge of -possibly lunatic belief; a young boy is haunted by cosmic loneliness in the form of a medical encyclopedia; the heir to an absent father’s wealth can’t quite bring himself to claim his portion.

The ordinary becomes epic in the contested terrain between faith and doubt, love and sex, spirit and flesh, reality and illusion.

Alan Rifkin is a writer for Los Angeles Magazine. He lives in Long Beach, CA.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Rifkin combs L.A and environs for characters usually omitted from the national consciousness: neither drug dealers nor movie moguls, though lit by reflections from the glossy industry surrounding them. In "The Honor System," the ambivalent heir of a custom pool business has a series of encounters at Death Valley with an appealing woman "fleeing Studio City in a divorcee trance," who, confounded by a 50-cent charge and the lone $10 bill in her hand, backs into the narrator in the first tentative step to friendship. In "After the Divorce," an Encino teenager walks out one afternoon, intending to appear unannounced at his father's elegant home; en route he considers possible responses, but the pivotal moments occur when his father drives him home and talks with his mother. In "Signal Hill," trim sentences beautifully set the scene, but the divorced protagonist with an eye for the 25-year-olds at the gym is much less engaging. Well, the book still contains some gems, among them a clear, polished voice for L.A. County. Roberta Johnson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

" ...hauntingly beautiful, the work of a gifted storyteller with a sharp eye but a tender heart." -- LA Times Book Review

"A spot-on, weirdly life-affirming and terrifically written batch of stories. I could read this guy all day." -- Jerry Stahl

"Alan Rifkin's deeply felt short stories carefully balance faith and emptiness with both wit and wonder. A terrific collection." -- Jill Ciment

"Alan Rifkin's stories have a magnificent plaintive beauty. Not since Flannery O'Connor have so many misfits prevailed." -- Martha Sherrill

"As incisive, eloquent and definitive a collection of L.A. stories as any since David Freeman's A Hollywood Education nearly twenty years ago, but from the other side of the psychic tracks, where desperation runs parallel with wisdom." — Steve Erickson -- Review

"As incisive, eloquent and definitive a collection of L.A. stories as any since David Freeman's A Hollywood Education." -- Steve Erickson

"Rifkin writes with such startling originality that you have to believe he'll be the next darling of the literary world." -- Time Out, NY

...[Y]ou've got to be ready to read Rifkin. The only guarantee is his craftsmanship, which inevitably is exquisite. -- Orange County Weekly

Stories... suggest that Rifkin is what might have happened had Nathanael West lived on and been even more talented....Exquisite." -- Kirkus Reviews, *Starred Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 152 pages
• Publisher: City Lights Publishers (September 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0872864243
• ISBN-13: 978-0872864245
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,425,554 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars In time......., March 7, 2004

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Signal Hill (Paperback)

Five Stars for effort: Three stars for result. Alan Rifkin knows how to write. He comes to this minor collection of short stories with credentials in journalism and creative writing. And it seems he has an idea of where he eventually hopes to arrive - in the peopled tarmac called Los Angeles. But in these stories (actually four short stories and a novella from which the collection derives its title) Rifkin pens sketches of ideas of personalities and psychology that in the end are fairly shallow. True, the very isolated psyches of people living on the freeways headed to momentary entanglements with other isolationists might just be a valid view of Angelinos. But to make us care about them we need more fluid style of telling and a few sidebar mirrors to reflect the hollow faces of these folk, perhaps finding a home within our memories when the book is finished. Not quite there yet. But sounds like real stories may come down the multiple off ramps!

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very moving, October 28, 2003

By 

Patrick Emmett (Long Beach, Ca) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Signal Hill (Paperback)

I was deeply struck as I read the four stories and novella that comprise Alan Rifkin's Signal Hill at how in touch with the human experience the author is. His stories are filled with gentle touches of characters' self deprecating humor, as they realize, through loss, regret, and occasional momentary triumphs, how precious, while maddening, everyday life can be. He gave me a whole new appreciation for Long Beach and its hilltop neighbor, Signal Hill, these good-hearted provincial outposts of the big city that looms just up the Harbor Freeway. His stories remind me of some of the best of Philip Roth's early works. I look forward to reading more revelation from Mr. Rifkin.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Inner Landscape of LA, November 26, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Signal Hill (Paperback)

Rifkin can write a sentence like no one since Henry James. The movement and rhythm of his prose suggests the style of a craftsman mixed with the touch of one inspired. The book is not just great technically, though. It's also funny (witness the scene where Richard Leviton gives himself a haircut), moving, and poignant, sometimes all in the same scene.

The thing that stands out above all else is the sense that even though all the people Rifkin portrays are firmly grounded--in the Valley, in the desert, in Signal Hill--they're all completely lost in the mindscape that is the real geography of LA. This is the book's great revelation and what will keep readers intrigued as the make their way through the pages as well as interested in coming back to the book again and again.