In other words, this is a classic Los Angeles residential street of a book. Instead of Spanish Revival next door to Polynesian fantasy, we get snide alt-weekly riffing alongside academic theory, punctuated by lots of delightfully shunpike Southern California lore. There’s nothing wrong with an essay collection, of course — unless it’s posing as a cohesive tour de force of cultural history. Lunenfeld gets out of his own way for a spell, and the prose starts to bloom. But “City at the Edge of Forever” remains, stubbornly, 11 chapters in search of a book.

Source: New York Times August 11, 2020 15:33 UTC