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Becoming Los Angeles: Myth, Memory, and a Sense of Place
Best-selling author and beloved chronicler of Los Angeles D.J. Waldie reconsiders the city in a collection of contemporary essays. Nobody sees Los Angeles with more eloquence than D. J. Waldie.
– Susan Brenneman, Los Angeles Times Deputy Op-Ed Editor Becoming Los Angeles , a new collection by the author of the acclaimed memoir Holy Land , blends history, memory, and critical analysis to illuminate how Angelenos have seen themselves and their city. Waldie’s particular concern is commonplace Los Angeles, whose rhythms of daily life are set against the gaudy backdrop of historical myth and Hollywood illusion. It’s through sacred ordinariness that Waldie experiences the city’s seasons. In his exploration of sprawling Los Angeles, he considers how the city’s image was constructed and how it fostered willful amnesia about the city’s conflicted past. He encounters the immigrants and exiles, the dreamers and con artists, the celebrated and forgotten who became Los Angeles. He measures the place of nature in the city and the different ways that nature has been defined. He maps on the contours of Los Angeles what embracing―or rejecting―an Angeleno identity has come to mean. Becoming Los Angeles draws on a decade of Waldie’s writing about the intersection of the city’s history and its aspirations. He asks, what do we talk about when we talk about Los Angeles today? In a global, cosmopolitan city, is there value in cultivating a local imagination? And he wonders how to describe a city that is denser and more polarized and challenged by climate change, homelessness, and economic disparity. There will always be romance in the idea of Los Angeles, but it requires renewed hope to sustain. Becoming Los Angeles is a further account of how Waldie gained a sense of place, which James Mustich, author of 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die, described as “an almost sacramental act of attention.” Becoming Los Angeles is ultimately a book about learning how to fall in love with wherever it is you are. Called a writer whose work is a “gorgeous distillation of architectural and social history” by the New York Times, whose essays and memoirs, said the Los Angeles Times, “conjure the idiosyncratic splendor of Southern California life,” D. J. Waldie is the author of the acclaimed Holy A Suburban Memoir and other books that illuminate the ordinary and the everyday in lyrical prose. In collaboration with Diane Keaton, Waldie provided the text for two photographic explorations of California Romantica , dealing with homes in the Spanish Colonial Revival Style of the early twentieth century, and House, examining post-modern interpretations of domesticity. California Romantica became a Los Angeles Times non-fiction bestseller in 2007. D. J. Waldie’s narratives about suburban life have appeared in BUZZ, The Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Georgetown Review, Salon, dwell, Los Angeles Magazine, Spiritus, Gulf Coast, Urbanisme, Bauwelt, and other publications. His book reviews and commentary have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. He lives in the home where he was born in Lakewood, California, where he was formerly the Deputy City Manager.
– Susan Brenneman, Los Angeles Times Deputy Op-Ed Editor Becoming Los Angeles , a new collection by the author of the acclaimed memoir Holy Land , blends history, memory, and critical analysis to illuminate how Angelenos have seen themselves and their city. Waldie’s particular concern is commonplace Los Angeles, whose rhythms of daily life are set against the gaudy backdrop of historical myth and Hollywood illusion. It’s through sacred ordinariness that Waldie experiences the city’s seasons. In his exploration of sprawling Los Angeles, he considers how the city’s image was constructed and how it fostered willful amnesia about the city’s conflicted past. He encounters the immigrants and exiles, the dreamers and con artists, the celebrated and forgotten who became Los Angeles. He measures the place of nature in the city and the different ways that nature has been defined. He maps on the contours of Los Angeles what embracing―or rejecting―an Angeleno identity has come to mean. Becoming Los Angeles draws on a decade of Waldie’s writing about the intersection of the city’s history and its aspirations. He asks, what do we talk about when we talk about Los Angeles today? In a global, cosmopolitan city, is there value in cultivating a local imagination? And he wonders how to describe a city that is denser and more polarized and challenged by climate change, homelessness, and economic disparity. There will always be romance in the idea of Los Angeles, but it requires renewed hope to sustain. Becoming Los Angeles is a further account of how Waldie gained a sense of place, which James Mustich, author of 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die, described as “an almost sacramental act of attention.” Becoming Los Angeles is ultimately a book about learning how to fall in love with wherever it is you are. Called a writer whose work is a “gorgeous distillation of architectural and social history” by the New York Times, whose essays and memoirs, said the Los Angeles Times, “conjure the idiosyncratic splendor of Southern California life,” D. J. Waldie is the author of the acclaimed Holy A Suburban Memoir and other books that illuminate the ordinary and the everyday in lyrical prose. In collaboration with Diane Keaton, Waldie provided the text for two photographic explorations of California Romantica , dealing with homes in the Spanish Colonial Revival Style of the early twentieth century, and House, examining post-modern interpretations of domesticity. California Romantica became a Los Angeles Times non-fiction bestseller in 2007. D. J. Waldie’s narratives about suburban life have appeared in BUZZ, The Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Georgetown Review, Salon, dwell, Los Angeles Magazine, Spiritus, Gulf Coast, Urbanisme, Bauwelt, and other publications. His book reviews and commentary have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. He lives in the home where he was born in Lakewood, California, where he was formerly the Deputy City Manager.
- GenresHistoryNonfictionEssays
224 pages, Hardcover
Published September 15, 2020
12 people are currently reading
260 people want to read
About the author
D.J. Waldie
16 books31 followersD. J. Waldie is a cultural historian, memoirist, and translator. In books, essays, and online commentary, he has sought to frame the suburban experience as a search for a sense of place. Often using his hometown of Lakewood as a starting point, Waldie’s work ranges widely over the history of suburbanization and its cultural effects.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 14, 2021
A meditative account of the various ways Los Angeles has imagined itself, fantasized about itself, erased itself, and forgotten itself, arguing that these imaginations, fantasies, erasures, and forgetting are as important to the reality of Los Angeles as the actual history that Waldie tells in a series of fragments. The narrative is itself a pastiche, reflecting the physical form of the city he wo clearly loves for its flaws.
March 21, 2021
I enjoy DJ Waldie’s writing. He is able to recount history, politics and culture as well as muse about his time growing up.
February 8, 2021
Beautiful and thought-provoking. Felt like taking a quiet, long walk with an interesting friend. I thought the early histories, focusing on the differences between our various images and views of Los Angeles, was particularly strong.
April 30, 2022
This book was…….minisculely inspiring and enormously frustrating.
An article describes Waldie as “at once lyrical and unsentimental” which is true but he takes both of these adjectives to the extreme becoming, in my opinion, “at once self-serving in his lyricism and unnecessarily specific in his unsentimentalism” and the interchange between these two modes created whiplash that constantly made me wonder where I am? I mean this is a book about the history of Los Angeles is it not? So why are you explaining the details of Greek mythology to me?
I can see very clearly what he was attempting to do, capture the grittiness of the history of Los Angeles and then consequently illustrate how that grittiness can and should be translated into poetry. But the way he goes about it is just…plain boring.
Yes there’s a place for the plain facts of history in poetry, there’s no bigger advocate for that than me, but you have to be intentional about the facts you choose. This book info dumps facts and statistics on you in, what I feel like, is an attempt to gain credibility with his readers in order to justify his poeticism. If we think he knows absolutely everything about Los Angeles, the square footage, the exact temperature of that day, the high school someone went to…then we can trust that he’s an absolute authority on LA and thus his (attempted) lyricism will land. And maybe it worked for some people but…not me, clearly.
I mean so many seemingly interesting stories were only half told or were lost in the slew of the aforementioned info dump of facts and statistics.
For example, an essay about Kevin Starr, there’s something there but WHO is Kevin Starr, other than him being an author of many books there’s no introduction given, no reason for me to care about this Kevin Starr and the way he interpreted California. There’s no context given to so many of these essays, and there isn’t extensive context needed just one line, one of his poetic lines to give us a reason to cares.
So lines like “Without Kevin Starr now, we must consider the meaning of California and measure our distance from the dream’s realization ourselves” fall flat.
This essay is followed up by one about Huell Howser where TOO MUCH context is given…”graduation from high school; and afterward college and a degree” …and more in a series of completely unnecessary descriptions that do nothing to illuminate or enhance WHO Huell Howser is and WHY he is important to the landscape of LA.
Or the essay about “Holy Land” ….what IS Holy Land, he was asked to write a screenplay about it but nowhere does it even hint what Holy Land is even about other than that it was written by him (a detail I almost missed and only caught after my third re-read trying to figure out what this essay had to do with ANYTHING).
He interrupts his sentences with citations in parentheses, referencing the names of the essays in that chapter and I have no idea why. For more than half the book I thought he was referencing pieces of popular media that related to Los Angeles which honestly would make more sense than referencing then names of the essays we’re about to read in such a clumsy, cluttering way that make his “lyrical” intros nearly unreadable.
So yeah. I’m so passionate about the story of Los Angeles and when it’s told…badly, I simply must write an essay. I had high hopes for this book and can certainly utilize a couple of quotes and I did find some of the stories very interesting. But ultimately I think this book fails at its main goal, explicating the beauty of Los Angeles, and honestly (I’m gonna end this being a hater) that’s what happens when you dont own a car in LA, you miss a core part of the city and thus….this book.
An article describes Waldie as “at once lyrical and unsentimental” which is true but he takes both of these adjectives to the extreme becoming, in my opinion, “at once self-serving in his lyricism and unnecessarily specific in his unsentimentalism” and the interchange between these two modes created whiplash that constantly made me wonder where I am? I mean this is a book about the history of Los Angeles is it not? So why are you explaining the details of Greek mythology to me?
I can see very clearly what he was attempting to do, capture the grittiness of the history of Los Angeles and then consequently illustrate how that grittiness can and should be translated into poetry. But the way he goes about it is just…plain boring.
Yes there’s a place for the plain facts of history in poetry, there’s no bigger advocate for that than me, but you have to be intentional about the facts you choose. This book info dumps facts and statistics on you in, what I feel like, is an attempt to gain credibility with his readers in order to justify his poeticism. If we think he knows absolutely everything about Los Angeles, the square footage, the exact temperature of that day, the high school someone went to…then we can trust that he’s an absolute authority on LA and thus his (attempted) lyricism will land. And maybe it worked for some people but…not me, clearly.
I mean so many seemingly interesting stories were only half told or were lost in the slew of the aforementioned info dump of facts and statistics.
For example, an essay about Kevin Starr, there’s something there but WHO is Kevin Starr, other than him being an author of many books there’s no introduction given, no reason for me to care about this Kevin Starr and the way he interpreted California. There’s no context given to so many of these essays, and there isn’t extensive context needed just one line, one of his poetic lines to give us a reason to cares.
So lines like “Without Kevin Starr now, we must consider the meaning of California and measure our distance from the dream’s realization ourselves” fall flat.
This essay is followed up by one about Huell Howser where TOO MUCH context is given…”graduation from high school; and afterward college and a degree” …and more in a series of completely unnecessary descriptions that do nothing to illuminate or enhance WHO Huell Howser is and WHY he is important to the landscape of LA.
Or the essay about “Holy Land” ….what IS Holy Land, he was asked to write a screenplay about it but nowhere does it even hint what Holy Land is even about other than that it was written by him (a detail I almost missed and only caught after my third re-read trying to figure out what this essay had to do with ANYTHING).
He interrupts his sentences with citations in parentheses, referencing the names of the essays in that chapter and I have no idea why. For more than half the book I thought he was referencing pieces of popular media that related to Los Angeles which honestly would make more sense than referencing then names of the essays we’re about to read in such a clumsy, cluttering way that make his “lyrical” intros nearly unreadable.
So yeah. I’m so passionate about the story of Los Angeles and when it’s told…badly, I simply must write an essay. I had high hopes for this book and can certainly utilize a couple of quotes and I did find some of the stories very interesting. But ultimately I think this book fails at its main goal, explicating the beauty of Los Angeles, and honestly (I’m gonna end this being a hater) that’s what happens when you dont own a car in LA, you miss a core part of the city and thus….this book.
September 16, 2020
Mr. Waldie's collection of poignant essays gave this reader insight into the complex mosaic that comprises the people and their towns and cities of the Los Angeles basin. Utilizing his perspective from growing up and living in a modest Los Angeles neighborhood, the author digs into the details of past and present that provide a revealing sense of place for himself as well as his readers, whether we are residents, visitors, or gawking tourists.
January 20, 2022
Wonderful. So much poetry in DJ Waldie’s careful observations of history and present day life in Southern California.
July 8, 2025
One of the best popular writers of place, and suburban place especially, we have out there. A collection of essays, short pieces, etc. Always a pleasure to read Waldie.
September 4, 2021
"Becoming might be the definition of Los Angeles," Waldie writes. These reflective essays, or "footloose thoughts," explore such topics as 19th century would-be boomtowns, Spanish Colonial Revival architecture, TV personalities Huell Howser and Tom Hatten, our months without sunshine, a retailer whose specialty is buttons and the examples of nature encountered on Waldie's suburban walks. Unassuming, thoughtful.
August 19, 2021
This is an absolute tour de force by one of the masters of Los Angeles writing. Waldie's collection of short essays here adds up to so much more than the sum of its parts. This is beautiful writing about a city that is so complex and difficult to grasp. Yet, Waldie manages to take the ungraspable and hold it in his hand, then mold it into words in a way that makes it plain and absolutely clear to the reader. We need more writers, thinkers, leaders and advocates for Los Angeles who have a fraction of the understanding of Los Angeles that Waldie possesses. I can't recommend this book more highly to any Angeleno wishing to gain some insight into their own city, or to an out of towner who would like to understand this most complex megalopolis. This is a great book to start the journey!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews