You missed `Explained' for a movie?

Los Angeles has long been home to great writers of non-screenplay-related verbiage, but the literary scene here has traditionally been diffuse. We have no Harry's Bar or George Plimpton's town house. And then there is that unjust but automatic presumption when we meet the rare L.A. author who doesn't work exclusively in Final Draft: Why is he making pennies writing books when studio hacks in this town live in mansions?

There have been recent steps to correct these municipal shortcomings, among the most promising the advent of 826, which opened in early 2005 in Venice. One of six 826 locations conceived and overseen by McSweeney's founder Dave Eggers (the others are in New York, Chicago, Michigan, Seattle and San Francisco, where Eggers lives), 826 is more than a place for after-school tutoring. With a staff and phalanx of volunteers heavy with first-rate writers, 826 has also turned into a rallying point of sorts for L.A.'s nascent young literary set. It has become a second home to talented writers coming out of the MFA programs at USC and UC Irvine and to television and screenwriters looking to escape Hollywood.

Through "The World Explained" and other events, McSweeney's and 826 have given some new contour to the next generation of local authors. Novelists including Glen David Gold and Salvador Plascencia, essayists and journo-bloggers such as Stephen Elliot and Joshuah Bearman, and TV refugees Rodney Rothman and Paul Feig, late of David Letterman and "Freaks and Geeks," respectively, have all read at their shows. The McSweeney's and 826 crowds are also cross-pollinating with the high-brow comedy and music scenes centered around Largo and M Bar, and performers such as Patton Oswalt, Paul F. Tompkins and Jon Brion.

Saturday's show was the third installment of "The World Explained." The first, which took place last fall at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, featured Tompkins' comedic stylings and Deschanel's dulcet strains. Rothman detailed how to create a boy band from scratch, and Bearman talked about the giant gerbil infestation in China. At the second show, at REDCAT in February, Modern Humorist founder Michael Colton discussed the time his mother almost disowned him for losing his virginity in her bedroom, Oswalt gave his theory of why a certain fast-food chain is probably a front for heroin dealing, and Brion played extemporaneous accompaniment. The next "The World Explained" will take place in the fall. Be smart. Go.