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The Los Angeles Diaries: A Memoir (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Winter is the season of the arsonist in Southern California..." (more)
Key Phrases: San Jose, San Francisco, Hollywood Boulevard (more...)

4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (24 customer reviews)

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Hardcover Available from these sellers. Published August 31, 2003	Hardcover, August 31, 2003	--	$2.45	$0.01
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Novelist Brown (Lucky Town; Hot Wire; etc.) mines the explosive territory of his own harsh and complicated life in this gut-wrenching memoir. The youngest child of a mentally ill mother and an absent father, Brown (b. 1957) grew up in the shadow of Hollywood with two older siblings: a brother, a moderately successful actor until his suicide at 27, and a sister who also dreamed of acting but took her life at 44. Brown's tales are harrowing: at five, he and his mother traveled from their San Jose home to San Francisco, where she set an apartment building ablaze. Arson couldn't be proven, but she was imprisoned for tax evasion. At nine, he shared his first drink and high with his siblings; when he was 12, a neighbor attempted to molest him; by 30 he was an alcohol- and cocaine-addicted writer-in-residence. During his marriage's early years, Brown often left his wife to feed his addictions, repeatedly promising her he'd reform. Desperate to fuel his writing career, he attempted screenwriting, but everything he pitched seemed too dark. Brown's genius compels readers to sympathize with him in every instance. Juxtaposed with the shimmery unreality of Hollywood, these essays bitterly explore real life, an existence careening between great promise and utter devastation. Brown's revelations have no smugness or self-congratulation; they reek of remorse and desire, passion and futility. Brown flays open his own tortured skin looking for what blood beats beneath and why. The result is a grimly exquisite memoir that reads like a noir novel but grips unrelentingly like the hand of a homeless drunk begging for help.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Novelist Brown adopts a blatantly confessional tone in his memoir of growing up with an emotionally disturbed mother and then drifting with his brother and sister into addiction even as he crafted award-winning stories. Looking back from the uncertain shore of sobriety, Brown alternates between his troubled childhood and even more troubling adulthood. In tragically tough prose, he details how he screwed over his first wife, children, sister, writing students, and agent--all while feeding addictions to booze, crank, and novels by hustling hollow teaching and scriptwriting gigs. But this feels like a tale written more for cash and catharsis than for connection. Brown says meeting his second wife changed his life and then keeps the process to himself, omitting the third act. Even though his is a story of selfishness selfishly told, Brown's blackout days make for a darkly alluring read. This is the kind of book that becomes an underground classic for all the wrong reasons. Frank Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: William Morrow; 1 edition (September 16, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0060521511
ISBN-13: 978-0060521516
Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 14.2 ounces

Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (24 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #973,665 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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› Visit Amazon's James Brown Page

Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
Winter is the season of the arsonist in Southern California. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
San Jose, San Francisco, Hollywood Boulevard, Santa Anas, New Yorker, Black Tower, Buick Special, Echo Park, Forest Lawn, Southern California

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Citations (learn more)

This book cites 4 books:

Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy on page 25
Final Performance by James Brown in Front Matter
Hot Wire by James Brown in Front Matter
Lucky Town by James Brown in Front Matter

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

	93% buy the item featured on this page: The Los Angeles Diaries: A Memoir 4.7 out of 5 stars (24)
	3% buy James Brown: The Godfather of Soul 4.9 out of 5 stars (10) $15.25
	2% buy Hero of the Underground: A Memoir 4.2 out of 5 stars (30) $9.98
	2% buy Lucky Town 4.0 out of 5 stars (1)

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Customer Reviews

24 Reviews

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4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
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Average Customer Review

4.7 out of 5 stars (24 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unforgettably Honesty, January 5, 2004

By	Gavin Austin "Gavin" (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

James Brown's memoir, The Los Angeles Diaries, cuts to the quick with its terse but layered descriptions of alcoholism, mental illness, sibling suicide, and, unexpectedly: hope. Without glorifying his addictions or misbehavior--especially towards his wife and three children--Brown's confessional creates a powerful intimacy where none should be.

When the book opens during the middle of Brown's usual commute to a screenwriting job in Hollywood, he seems a likeable professional, with morbidly intelligent commentary on his childhood and southern California. Then like a fast-forward edit in a music video, we witness one of Brown's typical three-day binges. He begins with one drink. And promises himself only one. Next comes crank, followed by crime... Without eliciting sympathy, Brown creates a sense of intimacy by simply stating his emotions: "My wife's name is Heidi, and I know I should call her, that I owe her that much, but I don't want to hear it. Her cursing. Her screaming. I know I've done wrong. I know there's no excuse for getting drunk when you're supposed to be home with your family and I wish knowing this would stop me from doing it. I wish that's all it took. That I could will it to happen. But it doesn't work that way, it never has, and in my state of mind, at this particular moment, I can't imagine living without it. The alcohol. The dope. I've been drinking and using since I was nine years old and sometimes I think it's the only thing that gives me any real pleasure."

The following eleven autobiographical sketches of The Los Angeles Diaries operate in a similar fashion. Brown's brutally honest narration, modestly describes disturbing situations throughout his life. Watching an author publicly display the pains and problems of his past, in a dignified, without-whining-way shows how people can learn from their mistakes and move forward into a brighter present.

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Modern American Tragedy, June 5, 2006

By	Seshat "gnosis" (Midwest, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Los Angeles Diaries : A Memoir (Hardcover)

"The Los Angeles Diaries" continue the tragic story begun in the book "Final Performance". dealing with the author, James Brown's
ability to cope with the issues of a tumultous childhood, which contributed toward the suicides of his older siblings Barry (a rising TV/movie star of the 1970's) and Marilyn.

The first part of the book describes the frustrations of the author (a college professor) at his ill-starred attempts to sell screenplays to Hollywood, and the familial way of handling disappointment with drugs and alcohol. Interspersed throughout
are vignettes (told in flashback) of his childhood, some sentimental, some chilling.

Brown also relates the difficulty of maintaining a sober facade before college professors and students(well acquainted with the
drug scene) who view him cynically.

One bright spot is the hilarious narrative of Jame Brown's attempt to mollify his angry wife with a pot-bellied pig as a peace offering.

The Machiavellian porker is named Daisy, and Brown's problems
burgeon in direct proportion to Daisy's expensive appetite -
and expansive girth.

Man and pig butt heads; in a contest between man and animal,
the animal will win hands down because it has "cuteness" on its side. (The end of the chapter is a riot...)

The second half of "The Los Angeles Diaries" is depressing, describing the downward spiral, and subsequent suicides of
Brown's brother, Barry, and his sister, Marilyn.

By the end of his life, Barry Brown was out of control: impersonating a police officer (a character from a movie) and
drinking compulsively. He shot himself to death at age 27.

Marilyn Brown attempted to wean herself from alcohol and drugs, but past demons prompted her one night to climb onto the railing of an overpass, then fling herself to her death in the dry riverbed below.

The book ends on an optimistic note; while in South Dakota, James Brown resolved to go cold turkey, or die - he made it.

But - his two books ("The Los Angeles Diaries" and "Final Performance") are touching memorials by the survivor to the siblings who didn't make it...

A new American classic.

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A privilege to read., April 13, 2004

By	C. Middleton (Australia) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

There's something terribly disturbing about confessional writing. In the hands of a man or woman at the top of their craft, a writer of immense skill and transparency, the experience for the reader can border on the pathological. Honesty without the slightest hint of pretence, particularly from an experienced and intelligent individual, knowing full well that what they tell the world is deeply personal and the honest to goodness truth, is rare. There's always some other agenda. For example, the two most famous confessional pieces in world literature are St. Augustine's Confessions and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Confessions; both author's had an agenda in writing these works, whether for purposes of religious conversion or literary immortality - both achieved their respective ends. Brown's book, however, is different. This is a writer telling a story because this particular story needed to be told. I get the impression that Brown needed to communicate his life in the only form he knew how to as a writer. This is a memoir about writing, addiction, alcoholism, relationships and human responsibility. It is about madness, suicide, compulsion, irony and love. This is a heartbreaking story that leaves the reader with a tiny glimmer of hope. As a true confessional does, it doesn't raise feelings of sympathy or thoughts of self-righteous condescension, but a real empathy, because we've all experienced, in varying degrees, this man's life.

Brown's vivid and deceptively rendered prose reminds me of a style of American writing that's all its own. One reads this simple, clear-eyed style of writing and thinks that it would be easy to imitate. Wrong. It appears simple but is awfully difficult to do. Brown's prose adds to the subject matter, making his family obsessions and chemical escapes much harsher, difficult to swallow, but in the end, inspiring and troubling.

The L.A. Diaries is a rare memoir because it is what it is and doesn't pretend to be anything else. Brown is a fine writer and this work was a privilege to read.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Just plain good writing
Mordant, witty, self-effacing, written in a simple but keen-eyed style. A hard story with a heart of gold, and it reads like a shot. Read more

Published 2 months ago by Dirk Hanson

5.0 out of 5 stars Lesson in Great Writing
I went through a stretch of time when I only read memoirs. I had just finished Stephanie Klein's Straight Up and Dirty, when a VP from the university I work at suggested I read a... Read more

Published 7 months ago by Michael J. Casadonte

5.0 out of 5 stars Run, don't walk, to purchase this book
I couldn't put this down. James Brown is an amazing writer with an equally amazing story.

Published 17 months ago by Dee

5.0 out of 5 stars LA Diaries
This book is so honest and so open, it makes a really good read. It's not a cheerful memoir, but I believe that is what makes it special. Read more

Published 18 months ago by P. Reyes

5.0 out of 5 stars The Los Angeles Diaries
James Brown's The Los Angeles Diaries is one of the best books I have ever read. This is an inspirational book that you will not be able to put down! Read more

Published 18 months ago by Marie Van Zee

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Writing
As difficult as this may have been to write, it is amazing writing. It captured me from the start. I recommend this memoir.

Published 18 months ago by Natalie Brizzee

5.0 out of 5 stars Los Angeles Diaries
I quit reading fiction some years ago. Now I read only true stories -- or so they claim. It's gotten so I can sense when the writer is BSing me. Read more

Published on September 12, 2007 by O. Ramirez

5.0 out of 5 stars Just get past the gaudy lead paragraphs
Linked stories of Brown's attempts to write, teach and stay married (while the siren songs of booze and cocaine call him toward self-annihilation) alternate with tales of his... Read more

Published on November 4, 2006 by Alan Rifkin

4.0 out of 5 stars Good...
Might as well read this book, it is a quick read. I found myself disappointed however. It entertained me verily while I was reading the book. I was happy I took the time... Read more

Published on May 25, 2006 by Heather

4.0 out of 5 stars Terrific concept, terrific execution
There are a number of things going really right for The Los Angeles Diaries, but none moreso than Brown's conception of his memoir - each chapter a different essay detailing a... Read more

Published on March 9, 2006 by E. Kutinsky

› See all 24 customer reviews...

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