Episode 6: David L. Ulin

David L. Ulin is the editor of the Library of America's Joan Didion: The 1960s and 70s, the editor of Air/Light literary journal, and the former books editor for the Los Angeles Times. 

I think [Joan Didion] is a corrective. Part of what drew me to her initially was that her inner weather and my inner weather are not that dissimilar. So there was that sense of recognition, but also the idea of her as a corrective of all that sunshine-y, California lotus-land myth. She is actively trying to destroy that mythology. And I think that as someone who resists that mythology because it reduces the state to the level of a cliche--it reduces the culture and the place to the level of a cliche--I liked that idea.  

Notes and references from this episode: 

Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, by David L. Ulin

Easy Rawlins series, by Walter Mosley

David Trinidad, Poetry Foundation

Eat the Mouth That Feeds You - by Carribean Fregoza

In the Watchful City, by S. Qiouyi Lu

If He Hollers Let Him Go, by Chester Himes  

The Socialist Who Won a Democratic Primary and the Dirty Hollywood Politics That Sunk His Campaign, by Zelda Roland, KCET

Dreaming: Hard Luck And Good Times In America, by Carolyn See

Golden Days, by Carolyn See

The Nowhere City, by Alison Lurie

I Should Have Stayed Home, by Horace McCoy

The Flutter of an Eyelid, by Myron Brinig

Joan Didion: The 1960s and 70s (Library of America), edited by David L. Ulin

Labyrinth, by David L. Ulin 

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