Stunning, bleakly beautiful, and laugh-out-loud funny, L.A. Breakdown paints a riveting portrait of 1960s Los Angeles, frozen in time yet disintegrating before our eyes with all the reckless speed of romantic era. Now in paperback for the very first time since its 1999 publication, the Deluxe Edition includes never-before-seen recovered chapters.
In Shaky Town, Lou Mathews has written a timeless novel of working-class Los Angeles. A former mechanic and street racer, he tells his story in cool and panoramic style, weaving together the tragedies and glories of one of L.A.'s eastside neighborhoods. From a teenage girl caught in the middle of a gang war to a priest who has lost his faith and hit bottom, the characters in Shaky Town live on a dangerous faultline but remain unshakable in their connections to one another. Like Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, John Steinbeck's Cannery Row, Katherine Ann Porter's Ship of Fools, Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place, and Pat Barker's Union Street, Shaky Town is the story of complicated, conflicted, and disparate characters bound together by place.
The novel-in-stories follows Dale Davis, a once-promising screenwriter navigating the challenges of a forty-year career in Hollywood. Initially hopeful and naive, he arrives with aspirations rooted in his past as a talented swimmer but soon finds himself blacklisted and struggling for recognition. The narrative intertwines his memories with previously published stories, illustrating the evolution of his dreams and disillusionments. Through a nonlinear structure, it explores the complexities of talent, ambition, and the harsh realities of the entertainment industry.