Landscapes of Desire: Anglo Mythologies of Los Angeles - Softcover

"It is the power of books (when they are good enough) to give readers an experience of an entire life. Landscapes of Desire is a book more than good enough." - Los Angeles Times Book Review Included in the Los Angeles Times Book Review's "Best Nonfiction of 2000". "A meticulous and informed reading of literature, photography, architecture, and painting to delineate some of the sources of image weaving and typecasting, as well as a more accurate view of conditions. The array of material assembled is impressive...the collective presentation yields considerable insight. No serious scholar of either the physical or the cultural history of the American West can ignore this work." - Richard Longstreth, Journal of American History "Landscapes of Desire is a challenging book and a short review cannot do justice to the wealth of ideas presented. All readers will be stimulated by the connections the author draws between the many sources he analyzes." - Joseph A. Rodriguez, Western Historical Quarterly "McClung's sharp eye, and his ability to be both critic and analyst, combine to make this a book of real timeliness. It is unusual, and it is smart." - William Deverell, author of Railroad Crossing: Californians and the Railroad, 1850-1910 "An important cultural study." - M. Catherine Miller, Journal of the West

To those of us who look at Los Angeles and see no sense at all, "Landscapes of Desire" offers a vivid and rewarding account of the particular visions that drove the period of Anglo dominance in the Los Angeles region, from about 1850 to about 1985. William McClung's fascinating essay, supported at every point by wonderful illustrations, shows that Anglo settlers and developers wanted nothing more than to make sense of their surroundings, but that their two dominant paradigms were at war with each other. Anglophone Los Angeles, McClung says, has tried strenuously to reconcile two competing mythologies of place and space: one of an acquired Arcadia - a found natural paradise - and the other of an invented Utopia - an empty space inviting development. The collision between these two underlying ideals is still present in the ambivalence at the heart of the city's and region's understanding of themselves. The Arcadian dream of nurturing inherited beauty entailed idealizing the region's Hispanic past. Yet that past was simultaneously belittled by the utopian vision of arid landscapes watered into Anglo plantations and ranchos reshaped into cities. From Helen Hunt Jackson's 1884 novel Ramona to the work of artists David Hockney, Edward Ruscha, and Terry Schoonhoven in the 1960s and after, Los Angeles has been an arena of competing and often incompatible constructions of ideal place and space. Looking at architecture, landscaping, literature, historiography, painting, conceptual art, and such ancillary activities and crafts as booster pamphlets, real estate promotions, and citrus box labels, McClung presents a new and refreshingly revisionist view of the city's growth. Examining designed spaces, including buildings, parks, freeways, and whole neighborhoods and communities, he gives readers a strong sense of the contradictions, failures, and triumphs that continue to govern L.A.'s image of itself. This is "Los Angeles Times" Best Nonfiction Book of 2000.