The History of Forgetting

Book excerpt: Los Angeles is a city which has long thrived on the continual re-creation of own myth. In this highly original work, Norman Klein examines the process of memory erasure in the city. Using a distinctive mixture of fact and fiction, Klein takes us on an “anti-tour” of downtown LA. He investigates the life for Vietnamese immigrants in the City of Dreams, playfully imagines Walter Benjamin as a Los Angeleno, and looks at the way information technology has recreated the city, turning cyberspace into the last suburb. We observe the close up demolition of neighbourhoods by urban planners, TV’s misrepresentation of the Rodney King uprising in1992, the effect on public consciousness of earthquakes, fires and racial panic, and the way in which crime novels make LA slums seem like abandoned cities in the Central American jungle.