YOU don't hear folks touting the virtues of Compton too often. But where some might view the city as an incubator of crime and poverty, Nina Revoyr sees a land of comity and cultural richness.
"Compton is a very romantic place for me," said the novelist, who was eating brunch at Auntie Em's, a hipster-magnet restaurant near her Eagle Rock home. "Historically, Compton's had an organic blend of Japanese and African American culture. You would see black families there designing Japanese gardens in their yards. I just love the idea of people finding a common stake in something larger than themselves."
This is not idle chitchat for Revoyr; it's an organizing principle for her art and life. As an empathetic chronicler of the dispossessed outsider in L.A., Revoyr is endlessly fascinated by the ways in which Los Angeles has acted as both a lure and a repellent for those seeking a fresh start. In her three novels, she has traced the messy intersections of lives that have been transformed by the complications of cultural and racial identity.
Pamela Beere Briggs: An article in Sunday's Calendar section about novelist Nina Revoyr said that documentary filmmaker Pamela Beere Briggs teaches at UCLA Film School. Briggs has a masters of fine arts from the school but does not teach there.
Nina Revoyr: An article in Sunday's Calendar section about novelist Nina Revoyr quoted her talking about the virtues of Compton. It should have said Crenshaw.
Nina Revoyr and Pamela Beere Briggs: An article last Sunday about novelist Nina Revoyr incorrectly said that documentary filmmaker Pamela Beere Briggs teaches at UCLA Film School. Briggs has an MFA from the school but does not teach there. Also, the article quoted Revoyr talking about the virtues of Compton. It should have said Crenshaw.
An unsolved murder lies at the heart of the story, but the book is really a multilayered examination of how Hollywood has always welcomed the alien as an insider. All of the main players in the book have taken on new personas within the comforting womb of the movie business. There's the protagonist, Jun Nakayama, reared in a traditional Japanese family that has renounced his new persona of rakish movie star; Elizabeth Banks, the glamorous sex bomb who can never quite efface her Midwestern roots; Ashley Bennett Tyler, the imperious director who cloaks himself in the mannerisms of the parvenu; and Nora Minton Niles, the Shirley Temple innocent who's a puppet for her domineering stage mother.
"In a larger sense, people come to L.A. to reinvent themselves," said Revoyr, who is of Japanese and Polish American descent. "At that time, at the beginning of the silent-film era, there was a kind of innocence, a bravado among the participants. It was that exciting sense of possibility, that anything could happen if you were in the right place and had the ambition to make it happen."
