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Here Los Angeles begins: With the printed word, that of Friar Juan Crespi, whose Diary births LA's name.
The telling of Fray Crespi's naming, above the conception of the world within us, via Jorge Luis Borges
Tupac and Paz bottom left, as F Scott and other novelists tumble off the 10 Freeway; and writers tell of life in Hollywood - glamorous and sad.
As in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, writers gather at Musso & Franks, where Raymond Chandler tries his luck.
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City in Mind: a Lyrical Map of the Concept of Los Angeles
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by J Michael Walker, 2011
Color pencil on polypropylene paper,
50" high x 256" wide
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In the summer of 2011, my good friend David Kipen, founder of Libros Schmibros, the quirky used bookstore and lending library in Boyle Heights, was invited to recreate the shop at the Hammer Museum. In turn David invited me to create an image for the shop, which evolved into some sort of map to tie Westwood (where the Hammer is) and Boyle Heights together.
What I came up with is this hand-drawn-and-lettered 23-foot long map of literary Los Angeles - a new and, perhaps, more profound way of considering the city than it usually gets credit for:
in the words of four dozen writers associated with L.A. (And a few one might not expect, Borges and Joyce among them).
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Approaching Westwood, home to the Hammer and Ray Bradbury's novel; Hunter S Thompson feels out of sorts in Beverly Hills....
As Joan Didion knows, here we come to the end of the continent, in a Hockney-esque Lower Left Blue sea....
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