Reading Tristes Tropiques: Civilization, Culture, and Rivers of Encounter

Reading Tristes Tropiques: Civilization, Culture, and Rivers of Encounter

By Armando Ortiz

While scrolling through social media, I came upon a video of a man in Mexico City interviewing people at a book festival. A person he interviewed mentioned Tristes Tropiques by the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. A seed of wonder was planted at that moment. So I began learning more about the author and the book. Unbeknownst to me, my friend Scott had a copy and gave it to me as a gift.

His introduction unfolds slowly, reflecting on life in Paris and the prospect of moving to Brazil. The chance to connect his studies with travel was a great opportunity. As he makes his way there, he talks about the French explorers who came to America in the 1500s. He also takes time to describe the oceanscape and life aboard a ship. Once in Brazil, an opportunity to explore further inland opens up. As he travels deeper into the interior, the people he encounters become increasingly varied: loggers, diamond seekers, immigrants, outlaws, and Indigenous communities.

He describes those parts of Brazil as an endless savannah of heat, with rains that flood vast stretches of the plains. In that environment he reflects on the lives of Indigenous communities living deep in the backcountry.

As I read his chronicles, I thought of how fortunate I was to have visited points of encounter like Lisbon, Portugal and Rouen, France. Those are places where people left their homes to explore new lands and returned with people, things, and ideas. As I read, I seemed to embark on a journey myself. The deeper his analysis became, the more his travels began connecting with places I had visited. The world that we inhabit today carries the consequences of those explorations and encounters.

Reading his chronicles, I suddenly found myself reliving my trip to Portugal, standing in front of the monument to the Age of Discovery. I recalled seeing South Asian people working in Lisbon. Lisbon was a departure point for many voyages of exploration, and yet the city itself had once been under Muslim rule. It makes me wonder how many untold stories a landscape can hold, and how many discoveries might still be waiting in places we think we already know.

I remembered the walking tour in Paris and listening to the guide tell us how Paris was divided into districts and how the floors of buildings reflected social standing. Then I also wandered through the old business area of Rouen where I saw a giant plaque dedicated to the explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, who sailed the Mississippi River. I thought about what he might have seen in North America–the markets, the people, and the interactions taking place around him. As I stood there, a Scandinavian tour group walked by, headed toward the town square and the cathedral.

Ideas Spread Like Fire:

Lévi-Strauss talks about the literature produced in France during the Age of Discovery. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was influenced by accounts of the New World and its civilizations. Although he never visited those places, he encountered their civilizations through the accounts he read. It also made me realize why I had unknowingly encountered Rousseau’s tomb when I went to see Voltaire’s. The torch he holds seems to me like a symbol of knowledge carried from one person to another. Ideas can spread like fire, and they can flow like water. They cross boundaries without necessarily respecting them, moving far beyond the places where they began.

While in Paris, we stood in front of Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, the woman carrying the French flag rising above the crowd. Reading Lévi-Strauss made me wonder how much the accounts of societies in the Americas influenced European debates about society, human nature, and political organization.

The Americas contributed not only new vegetables and fruits to the world, but also ways of living and new ways of doing things. What kind of debates might have begun after Europeans learned that some Indigenous societies had councils that included women as decision makers. I also wondered about Voltaire’s story The Huron–what it meant to imagine an Indigenous character living in France, and what Voltaire himself imagined of America as he wrote that story.

It is a reminder that the seeds of civilization also originated in Mexico, Central America, the Andes, and the Amazon. The food we eat is not the product of one genius society or one culture, but the result of countless cultures sharing, adapting, and transforming what came before. Cultures themselves are full of seeds—ideas, food, traditions, stories—that travel farther than the people who first cultivated them. Their intended use might have completely changed over time. For example, in the Philippines there is a fabric called piña, made from pineapple fibers. The pineapple itself was domesticated in the Americas and later introduced to the Philippines by the Spanish.

Rivers:

Another connection I made was with his reflections on water and rivers, which reminded me again of the walking tour where our guide pointed out the difference between the left and right banks of the Seine River. One side of the river had been developed by the Romans and over time Parisians built over those vestiges. Later he explained that the city was designed to keep specific groups of people in certain places of the city. The river was a point of division, but that same body of water also carried voyages towards the Western Hemisphere.

Lévi-Strauss writes about people he observed in Brazil who organized themselves along a dividing line, describing where they lived, where they held their ceremonies, who sat where, and how that imaginary river divided the community. I began to wonder whether a river itself could become the basis of community organization, with families, clans, and tribes forming around it. At the river’s edge, people celebrated and battled with each other. Yet floods also divided people from each other, sometimes temporarily and at other times forever.

Deep in the Brazilian backcountry he watched children play with carved dolls. One was of a woman with two children, while another was an old man. Through those figures, children were taught a galaxy of ideas; they seemed to serve as memory tools. Interestingly, he noticed that a French explorer, about a hundred and fifty years before him, had observed similar groups using similar figurines.

I began to wonder if the river itself represented a woman, and the two banks were her children—clans and tribes—held together and separated by the same water. I was also curious to know what the old wooden man represented, whether he represented a shaman, an ancestor, or simply someone who had reached old age. I was left thinking about where I live and the importance of water as a life force and a means by which we travel. It gives life, yet it can also be a source of conflict.

Rivers, like springs and watering holes, are places of encounter. Although idyllic and verdant, they can also be dangerous places—as sources of food, celebration, meetings and conflict. Water is used to process food and give birth. It creates places of contemplation and meditation, and locations that are good for hunting. These places can become  marked with symbols–rock carvings, pictographs, and other traces of human presence. Bodies of water and their sources have been places where cultures are born, where they die, but also where they are reborn.

The Sun: 

Along his travels, he describes the heat he feels while crossing parts of Brazil. Yet he also takes time to describe the splendor of a sunset and the magnificence of a sunrise during his boat trips and expeditions. Although he does not dwell on it directly, the sun is everywhere in the landscape: giving life to plants, drying the land after the rains, and illuminating the world around him. The same sun that makes the journey exhausting also reveals the beauty of the landscape. A journey beneath the midday sun can be exhausting, even punishing. Yet sometimes it is in those moments, beneath the heat and glare, that new insights begin to emerge. Reading Lévi-Strauss had done exactly that for me.

Portugal and France: Where Rivers Meet History

Points of Encounter - Portugal and France: Where Rivers Meet History

By Armand Ortiz

In December 2024 Yeny and I visited Portugal. We mainly went for the food, and because Portugal is relatively compact, we were able to explore several different regions in just a few days. I was excited to visit Lisbon because I'd already experienced the city through Fernando Pessoa’s writings, long before I walked its streets. Yet the things we saw and experienced, as I later reflected, came to mean much more than I had expected.

In Lisbon we took a walking food tour and tasted bifanas which you could lather up with spicy oil called piri-piri. We also ate the iconic bolinhos de bacalhau, which are toasty, crunchy, soft and chewy all at the same time. The hot chocolate was like none that I had had before: creamy, thick, and deeply chocolaty.

As we strolled along the edge of the Tagus River we were greeted by a giant monument dedicated to the Age of Discovery and the men that set off from Lisbon to explore the world. In their attempts to have direct access to goods and spices they first sailed along the coast of Africa, then rounded the continent on their way to India. As a result, Portugal became one of the earliest European nations to launch an era of maritime exploration. Standing before it, I admired what it celebrated, though I had yet begun to understand the larger story it represented.

We learned of Henry the Navigator, Vasco da Gama, and Ferdinand Magellan. The Portuguese also explored and colonized South America, creating new networks of trade and cultural exchange while also contributing to systems of conquest, slavery and forced migration. Brazil would become Portugal’s largest and most significant colony. In Portugal it seemed that everything had a story, and that story often led somewhere else– a spice, a crop, a tradition, or a person who had crossed an ocean.

We were fortunate enough to travel around Portugal, learning about its history and how its architecture, art, and cuisine were influenced by centuries of exploration and overseas connections. We visited places like Nazare, where a small chapel dramatically atop a coastal cliff. Today, the town is best known for the giant Atlantic waves that have made Nazare one of the world’s premier surfing destinations. At Sintra, we stopped to admire the architecture of Pena Castle, a building containing symbols of Portugal’s maritime history. Although we enjoyed every place we visited, Lisbon stayed with me the longest. It was also a place where a major battle between Crusader and Muslim armies took place, which reestablished a Christian kingdom in 1147.

At that time I had not fully understood the significance of our visit. It was not until we’d returned from our trip to France that things gelled in my mind.

A few months later we went to France, spending most of our time exploring different parts of Paris. Walking through the Luxembourg Gardens allowed us to experience a city shaped by centuries of artists, writers and revolutions. We dined at one of the restaurants Ernest Hemingway once frequented, and at times I felt that his descriptions of Paris and its people were on point.

We also took several walking tours. One was a guided tour that had us tasting foods as we meandered through the Montmartre neighborhood. The tastiest dishes were the rich beef bourguignon and the cheese board. By the time we had crepes, we were full but still eager to taste the savory pastry, all under the backdrop of the Sacre Coeur. The other tour started on the Ile de la Cite, which is the historical center of Paris and is located in the middle of the Seine River. We were taken to different parts of the island and given brief descriptions of how Paris grew and evolved over the years.

We managed to take a day trip to Rouen, a city along the Seine River where Viking, French and English influences converged. The city is closely connected to the Viking world and the Christianization of Scandinavia, and it is also remembered as the place where Joan of Arc was executed. From Rouen, Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, embarked on the expedition that eventually led him to explore the Mississippi River.

The circle of discovery continued after our return from France. I thought that we had traveled to see places. Only later did I realize we had been walking through places where worlds had collided. Soon after, I began to understand that France and Portugal were not simply destinations but meeting points– places where people, ideas, foods, religions and cultures crossed paths. Through those encounters, history continued to shape the world we live in today.

Looking back, I remember standing beside the Tagus River watching small sailboats drift quietly across the water. Now I see these memories differently. Rivers, ports, and crossroads are more than places on a map. They are places where civilizations meet, where ideas are exchanged, and where the traces of those encounters endure long after travelers have gone.

One Day of Life: The Rhythm of Survival

One Day of Life: The Rhythm of Survival

Reading One Day of Life by Manlio Argueta

By Armando Ortiz

Manlio Argueta is best known for his novel One Day of Life, a story centered on three generations of women from the same family. The men appear only at night or for a brief visit and then disappear into the mountains or the fields, leaving the women in charge of the daytime routines. Set during one of El Salvador’s most violent periods, the novel captures a country strained by conflict and survival. 

Argueta’s story unfolds over the course of a day, with chapters marked by the passing hours, each offering brief glimpses into what the characters do to survive and cope. At its center is the family matriarch, who rises before the rooster’s cry and quietly tends to her grandchildren and their home. 

The author also captures El Salvador’s natural environment, weaving bird sounds and landscape into the fabric of the story. Their presence is connected to religion and superstition, blurring the line between the natural and the spiritual. Nature becomes a character of its own–it sweats with its rain and breathes through the greenery. Within this living landscape, there is a tale of strong religious beliefs that struggle with ideological truths, and economic opportunity is very limited. 

Men on both sides are the aggressors. They are the ones trained to kill their opponents. On one side you have peasants siding with the guerrillas that hide in the mountains. On the other side you have the soldiers fighting for the country, trained to follow orders, and who also come from the same working-class background. In this way, the novel becomes a tragic drama—one in which a life of ease is denied to many, who instead endure a constant, daily struggle.

As I read the novel, I was reminded of Ulysses by James Joyce in its attention to the rhythms of a single day and the interior lives of its characters. Towards the end Mrs. Bloom becomes a principal character of the story, and her perspective is taken into account. But unlike Joyce’s work, Argueta’s novel is rooted in a very raw experience that many people live through today, the urgency of survival. This is not a story of reflection or wandering–it is a story of endurance.

The women at its center are not simply observers of life; they are its protectors, striving to shield the children in their care. Through their interactions and survival, you enter their minds briefly and experience what women endured during the civil war. The novel becomes a quiet, sorrowful symphony—revealing how ideology, myth, and conflict shape even the smallest moments of human life.

A Calendar in the Rock: Road-trip to Sedona

A Calendar in the Rock: Road-trip to Sedona

By Armando Ortiz

We left Los Angeles thinking Sedona would be good for hikes and photographs. Red rock formations. Winter light. Trails that look romantic even before you adjust the colors on your phone. 

That was the plan — make Sedona our base and branch out. On a map, everything feels close. In the desert, distance widens. Hours stretch. Roads thin out. A day can disappear behind a windshield.

So we narrowed the circle. We would stay with Sedona. Let it be enough.

We arrived the first week of January. Rain had passed through the night before, and the air carried that cold clarity that follows a desert storm. The red earth looked darker than it does in photographs. The silence did not feel empty. It felt layered.

At Palatki, cliff dwellings rest inside sandstone walls as if they grew there. Pictographs remain — figures, markings, a silhouette that held my attention longer than I expected. I found myself wondering who it represented. The not knowing felt appropriate.

But it was at the Crane Petroglyph site where something shifted. 

The ranger pointed to a series of etched markings along the cliff wall. At first they looked like many of the others — lines, shapes, fragments of intention. Then he explained that some archaeologists believe they functioned as a calendar. A way of tracking seasons. Movement. Planting cycles.

He said it plainly. Not as a grand claim. Just as possibility.

I stood there looking at the stone differently.

A calendar is not decoration. It is attention stretched across years. It is someone watching the sun closely enough to notice patterns, and patient enough to record them. It requires repetition. It requires memory.

On the walk back, we talked about it — about seasons, about how much observation it would take to live that closely with land and sky. The conversation was easy. But something in me had gone quieter. 

We use the word primitive too easily.

The ranger hadn’t argued that point directly, but the idea hovered there. Ancient becomes simple. Simple becomes inferior. Entire civilizations are reduced to survival stories.

Yet what I had just seen was study. Deliberate marking. Knowledge fixed in stone.

The next day, driving north toward Wupatki National Monument, the land widened into lava fields and open sky. In the background, the ever-present San Francisco Peaks rose like silent beings. The pueblos rise there from volcanic soil in a landscape of extremes — scorching summers, freezing winters, little water, relentless wind. Stone construction was not accidental; it was intelligent. It held heat. It endured. It answered the climate.

We admire the terraces of China and the agricultural engineering of the Inca Empire in Peru. We call those remarkable adaptations to demanding landscapes. Here too, there are traces of altered terrain and cultivated maize – signs of people working carefully with soil, shadow, and season.

At Walnut Canyon National Monument, homes carved into limestone cliffs stretch along what is now called the Island Trail. One dwelling becomes several. Several become many. What first appears isolated reveals itself as community. I imagined late afternoon settling into the canyon – smoke rising gently, hovering at the edge of the plateau, voices carrying across stone, the ordinary rhythm of preparing a meal, a child crying at a distance.

The ordinary is what endures. 

What unsettled me was not the age of these places. It was the quiet evidence of attention — architectural, agricultural, communal – embedded in them.

Sedona did not become a launching point for somewhere else. It became a place that made me slow down long enough to reconsider a word I had rarely questioned. 

We arrived looking for scenery.

We left still thinking.

Jawbone Canyon to Lake Isabella: Marks Left in the Mountains

Jawbone Canyon to Lake Isabella: Marks Left in the Mountains

By Armando Ortiz

We started our overland one day expedition by meeting up at the Friends of Jawbone station. It's right next to highway 14. The visitor/rest stop is 15 minutes south of the 395. Hardly any cars drove by. Pulling in, my brother’s rig was already there. For this adventure I used Southern California Backroads & 4-Wheel Drive Trails by Charles A. Wells as a guide to reach Bodfish, CA. 

The shade that Jawbone Canyon gave kept the air cool. Before reaching a security booth we made a right onto the dirt road. Driving on Jawbone Canyon Rd a couple of miles, we gained steady elevation — Joshua trees, sotol, yucca and other desert fauna abounded. The air was warming up quickly and the sky’s dark blue was getting lighter. We reached a ridge where turbines or windmills stood. A morning breeze was non-existent. We paused, exited our cars, and talked before beginning our descent into Kelso Valley. We could see the natural green carpet covering the valley floor. 

Approaching the flattest area, we turned left and drove through the valley. To the right there were granite outcroppings. The area was fenced off on both sides – private property. Cows and horses grazed the green pastures. After a short time, signs of the past revealed themselves. Something that looked like giant bowling balls covered with foliage and other organic materials came to view. I stopped the truck and walked up to an uncovered part that looked like a mortar. After looking around, I noticed that several places had grinding depressions. I could hear our engines running at a distance. This area might have been a water source or at least a seasonal camp, making it a perfect place to process food. I took some photos and returned.

Ascending, more and more oak trees, both evergreen and deciduous, now lined the trail. The more elevation gained the more black oak with its delicate lobed leaves could be seen. From the window of the car the valley below kept getting smaller. The forest extended south of the mountains. We stopped at a place where we saw the foundations of an abandoned home. A brick chimney stood there among trees. Could this have been the home of a lone miner working on his claim?  After a few minutes we arrived at another collection of boulders and stopped the trucks to explore. Now a mix of oak and pine trees shaded us all around. Nearby was a small sign on a post that signaled the Pacific Crest Trail. This trail starts at the border of Mexico and takes thru hikers up to Canada.

Still driving on Jawbone Canyon Rd, we reached an old mine with a conical structure. Inside, the light pierced the sheet metal like laser beams. Gunshot bullets might have created that effect. This stretch of trail was mostly flat, the air felt cool and damp on the skin. A few minutes later, I stopped the truck near some boulders to find any signs of prior human life. Nothing was found. We made a left on to Paiute Mountain Rd tracing the contours of the mountains, and the fenced off properties, until we reached an open space. We stopped to take a break at Piute Peak Camp. My brother took out some oranges from the cooler. The flesh of the fruit was refreshing. Being surrounded by tall pine trees was a very pleasant moment. A sign pointed towards Paiute Peak. After a quick climb, we started driving down towards a gentle slope. It seemed that we were entering a different world. The light show had been cool, and the next section would be just as interesting.

A year prior a wildfire passed through this section of the mountain, the Borel fire 2024. This area had been completely burnt. Black trees, like giant needles solemnly stood, and a grey scale of ash covered the area. Some of the trees had blue ribbons, marked to be chopped down. The gentle slopes were completely carbonized. Dark shadows came to life in the midday sun - all seemed black. But there was a water source- a brook. Along the tiny creek, fresh green vegetation vibrated under the light. On the western side almost next to the truck lay a boulder. I got out, my feet sank onto the thick layer of pine needles. As I approached, mortars could be seen at the top. My mind, for a moment, heard rhythmic pounding, and people conversing by the rocks. One can easily spend hours looking around, but our destination was the Kern River. There were too many boulders to explore but not enough time on that day.

Once again, we drove, the pervasive signs of the fire that swept through the area was everywhere. There looked to have been a motorhome community, which brought me back to the present - evening television, checking of emails, and the hum of power generators. Following the natural curves of the mountain along Saddle Spring Road, barren trees, gray boulders, and darkened slopes seemed frozen in time. It felt as waves of settlement were covered and uncovered by nature’s power and time's enduring patience. There were empty little square subdivisions. Everything had been incinerated. The likelihood of people returning seemed high though. If people were here thousands of years ago, the area would continue to attract them. We started to descend. The landscape was apocalyptic, dusty propane tanks stood lonely, concrete foundations covered in ashes, and the oxidized axles that once held homes or cars lay abandoned. 

As we began our descent the road got rough. There were reddish and beige rocks on the ground with more ruts than where we started from. The landscape again began to transition to semi-desert fauna. This area had its own harshness: it was rockier, and drier with hardy desert fauna on the mountain side. With every other turn there were pinon pines and juniper trees. We finally reached the end of the trail. The dusty tires were back on a paved road - Caliente Bodfish Road. The drive was an unexpected revelation of all the people that have called these mountains home. A reflection of all the vestiges that seem to recycle themselves over time with places that were once called home or where people processed raw materials. Now on the road we passed the town of Bodfish and headed to the Kern River.

Wine, Waves and Change: Reading Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat in Paris

 

Wine, Waves and Change: Reading Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat in Paris

By Armando Ortiz

I read John Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat while traveling through France. Although I was there, his book transported me to a more familiar place. It took me back to the Central Coast of California where a crash of waves could be heard - Monterey. At one point I sat in a cafe facing the Notre Dame Cathedral as endless foreign voices drifted past, and yet I could feel that cool onshore wind.

Steinbeck introduces most of the gang of characters in the first few chapters; Danny, the indifferent property owner who inherits land from a relative; Pilon, the risk-taker always trying to get easy money– mostly for wine; and Pirate with his five dogs. Unlike his friends, he peddles bundles of wood and saves most of his earnings. He also survives by getting handouts. The money is kept safe under Danny's pillow.

Many scenes are absurd and outlandish. Reading this tragedy becomes just as enjoyable as reading Don Quixote. There is a scene that involves a vacuum. Later a Mexican soldier wanders into town having lost his wife to a captain and the gang give him a place to rest. 

Though they cheat and scheme, the gang remains loyal to each other. They seem to be characters from Don Quixote, people who go about their business, but in their doomed idealism find themselves in the midst of comic situations. The list of background characters adds more texture to Steinbeck’s story, becoming almost a representation of the painting that I stood in front of while visiting a museum.

At the Orsay Museum I found myself staring at a painting by Leon Frederic’s “Les ages de l’ouvrier” or The Ages of the Worker where a group of young homeless children are playing a game of cards. It seems as if they are gambling with each other's fate and meager earnings. 

I thought of Pilon and Danny who also risk their luck every day trying to find the easiest way to get drunk and fall asleep on a warm floor. For them — aside from Pirate — work is dishonorable.

The boy about to put down his card reminded me of Pilon who is always trying to take risks that favor him. He spends more energy, trying to think of easy ways to exploit people instead of getting a job. In stark contrast, the kid behind him holds a sack— a small and meaningful contrast that reminded me of Pirate’s honesty and willingness to work. Steinbeck’s images and emotions kept me in thought as I walked through Paris.

While walking along the Saint Martin Canal, and taking in the warm summer breeze I also saw a group of four friends across the water. They were drinking and laughing. As we reached a bridge I saw one of them plunge into the water from the top of the metal structure. People took quick glances as they ate their lunch and chatted with friends.

 Their muscles flexed as they pulled themselves up and out of the water. Their hair made them look like cholos from the 80's posted along a street in a Spanish speaking barrio. The guys passed their beer cans between them and talked loudly. 

A dog completed the pack. It would jump from the edge and eagerly chase them as they kept themselves afloat. One of them, probably its owner, pulled it up from its harness. They reminded me of Steinbeck’s characters- men who hadn’t fallen into the routine of work, rejected the accumulation of material goods, and although they led a solitary life they enjoyed each other’s company. I thought about the gang in the story, their unrestricted approach to imbibing red wine. It seemed as if time lasted forever for both the men across the canal and the men in the story.

Towards the end of the book, Danny’s homes had burned to the ground, culminating with him falling into a gulch. He’d completely squandered his inheritance and instead drank. The night of his fiesta fights break out and people get merry. Yet in his drunken stupor his fall ends in an untimely death.

The town is heartbroken and his friends are dejected. Although so close to the ocean, the town and the characters reflect the precarious relationship with nature. Just as a candle’s flame can start massive wildfires, excessive habits whether materialism or drunkenness if not controlled can lead to death. The real fire that the friends played with was excess wine. 

They find themselves without the right attire to go to the funeral, so they mourn from afar. Their rejection of common customs in order to indulge in their drunkenness comes at a cost, and like their unkept homes they have no control over the consequences of the fate that they chose. 

Nonetheless, watching the Parisian friends, and recalling the boys in the painting, I understood why Steinbeck treats their drunken camaraderie with such kindness — not as failure, but as a form of survival. Every day we take chances in the things we do, and the end can come in a flash. Yet it's with friends that we experience the best of times too, making life meaningful. Throughout my trip Steinbeck had me thinking that one doesn’t need to be versed in the best schools to appreciate those things. The memories we make should be with those that we love. Those that love us back will be there till the end, no matter how messy things might get. My trip to France blended perfectly with Steinbeck’s short novel.

Dreams from Bunker Hill: Fante's City and Mine - Book Review

Dreams from Bunker Hill: Fante’s City and Mine - Book Review

From Bunker Hill to Santa Monica: Reading Fante against my Los Angeles

By Armando Ortiz

John Fante’s Dreams from Bunker Hill tells the story of Arturo Bandini, a young writer scraping by in Bunker Hill, a neighborhood once bustling with life but now remembered mostly by name. As the story unfolds, Fante paints vivid portraits of Los Angeles, making the novel a gem for anyone interested in the city’s history and character. 

The book fits within the broader, often overlooked history of the Western United States at the turn of the 20th century. Born in Colorado to Italian immigrants, Arturo grew up poor, Catholic, and keenly aware of class divisions. In Los Angeles, he briefly finds success as a writer, yet discovers that the city’s opportunities come with their own rigid hierarchies. Life moves faster, the money is better, yet the drawbacks weigh heavily.

As Arturo weaves through the labyrinth of Los Angeles, Fante describes places instantly familiar to Angelinos. Reading his passages brought back memories of my own. I thought of the Hollywood Hills– the mountains that frame the city– and of Santa Monica, where life always seemed different. Terminal Island stirred another memory: my parents driving to Long Beach so we could fish. For Arturo, it becomes a retreat for writing. His blunder of a beach trip echoes the city’s restless coastline that stretches for miles. 

From the coast, Fante takes you to the city’s core. The Olympic Auditorium, where Arturo attends a wrestling match, was also where I saw my first concert--Megadeth. In the novel, Arturo is booed out of the building. Downtown Los Angeles, too, comes alive in his story, its boulevards crowded with people searching for a meal or a deal— much as they still are today.

Fante contrasts the wealth and free-flow lifestyle of Hollywood’s elite with the lives of Arturo’s former classmates back home. Arturo is consumed by a gnawing envy, shaped by his Colorado upbringing. Although talented and successful, he feels out of place everywhere. To others, he is always too ethnic, too poor and never quite enough. His struggle with identity and belonging is deeply relatable, reflecting the tension between society’s expectations and the choices we make to shape our lives.

In the end, Fante weaves a tale that is both a meditation and portrait, capturing not only one man’s search for belonging, but also the restless pulse of Los Angeles– a rhythm still beating today.