Wednesday, February 19, 2003

BOOKMARK A Professor and His Students Explore the Literary Tradition of Los Angeles on a Web Site By BROCK READ Los Angeles has a long-standing reputation for superficiality and glitz -- not exactly the stuff of which acclaimed fiction is made, says Scott Bryson, an assistant professor of English at the city's Mount Saint Mary's College. But according to Mr. Bryson, such stereotypes obscure the city's rich literary tradition. It's a tradition that mines the same themes -- glitter and grit -- that dominate the films with which Los Angeles is more often associated. Mr. Bryson and students from a freshman survey course he teaches make the case for their city's literary exploits on a new Web site, Los Angeles Literature. The site collects information on a range of books, including noir classics like Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep and contemporary works like Karen Tei Yamashita's Tropic of Orange. There is a unifying theme even to such disparate novels, according to Mr. Bryson: a deep interest in the geography of Los Angeles. "This place, and its geography, have everything to do with what people end up writing about," he says, citing Joan Didion's Play It as It Lays, in which the protagonist spends much of her time navigating the city's freeways. "Even the highway system makes its way into certain novels in a way that couldn't happen in New York or Chicago." Mr. Bryson, a transplanted Texan, says he knew nothing of Los Angeles's geography or its points of interest when he moved to the city. He started to read novels from and about Los Angeles as a way of acquainting himself with his new town. But soon the personal mission became a scholarly one. "I think it's important for readers to know more about the area that these works are emerging from," he says. The Web site presents itself as a sort of digital tour guide, mixing traditional resources -- biographies of authors, secondary bibliographies, and links to other relevant Web sites -- with photographs and maps that depict the real-life parks, cemeteries, and intersections that have inspired Angeleno authors. One page on the site lists all references to specific streets and buildings made in The Big Sleep; another includes video of a car ride down a highway frequented by the main character of Play It as It Lays. Both of the resources -- like virtually all the research materials that support the site -- were compiled by students in Mr. Bryson's "Writing and Los Angeles Literature" course, which he offers frequently to first-year students. The students, who work in groups of four or five, select an influential novel and create their own miniature Web sites, on which they explore the role that Los Angeles's geography played in shaping the book. Almost all of Mr. Bryson's students live in or around Los Angeles, but few have read much of the city's literature or analyzed its impact on their hometown, he says. By creating research works of their own, he argues, students learn to explore the city with more acute and critical eyes. Kelly Younger, an assistant professor of English at Loyola Marymount University, says that projects like Mr. Bryson's are valuable because they help students understand the complex influence Los Angeles exerts on its authors. "Los Angeles is so diverse and so culturally rich that there are so many various and different voices," says Mr. Younger, who teaches a course in which students read books and visit the sites in California where they were written. The site is still a work in progress, but Mr. Bryson says that it has already exceeded his expectations. "The student groups are constantly coming up with ways to present the material that I never would have thought of," he says. "I never envisioned the site's becoming this good." Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

2 private universities in Southern California consider merging Study documents economic benefits of secondary and higher education in the developing world 7 new chief executives are announced National Academy of Engineering honors 3 scientists for technological achievements A professor and his students explore the literary tradition of Los Angeles on a Web site