CSP 24 All That Glitters: Life and Literature in Los Angeles

Norman Mailer described Los Angeles as a “constellation of plastic.” John Fante called it a “sad flower in the sand.” Is Los Angeles really just “72 suburbs in search of a city,” as Dorothy Parker claimed, or is there something else brewing beneath the beautiful, sunny skies? We’ll explore (through art, films, and books) 20 th and 21 st century Los Angeles as both a real and imagined location. Through the completion of five short papers and one research paper, you’ll craft your own conceptual “map” of the place. If all goes well, there may even be an extra credit field trip or two. Required texts will include Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress, Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays, Nathaniel West’s The Day of the Locust, Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One, Helena Maria Viramontes’s Their Dogs Came With Them, Kate Turabian’s Student’s Guide to Writing Research Papers (5th edition), and an assortment of short readings (both fiction and non-fiction/historical).