Mike Davis’ Writing on L.A.

Re “Apocalyptic Look at L.A. Sparks Literary Fistfight,” Jan. 6:

Mike Davis is under attack for two reasons. He has agreed to function as a public intellectual of the left, a role quite common in Europe and Latin America but rare in the U.S. The singularity of his position has excited his enemies. State librarian Kevin Starr seems miffed he’s no longer the primary alpha-male historian of Southern California. Most of the rest of Davis’ attackers are politically conservative and disagree with his major analysis, but rather than meet him head on, they are biting at his footnotes.

Davis’ research yields heavy political consequences. Davis’ chapter on the case for letting Malibu burn, in “Ecology of Fear,” by itself, is a searing indictment of the systematic neglect by the city and county of the safety of generations of poor urban Angelenos, coupled to vast public subsidization of wasteful and unsafe development by the super-rich in the Santa Monica Mountains. The scandal was and is compounded by the failures of local media, including The Times, to confront the local power structure about it. There is a great dark hole to the modern history of Southern California. Those lightning strikes we’re seeing now are part of the continuing labors of Davis to illuminate the hole.

JOHN CLOUD

Santa Barbara

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Here’s one of those little pieces of context you wish Davis could get his arms around: The Northridge earthquake killed 72 people--if you count the heart attacks, the accidents caused by damaged traffic signals and the guy who killed himself because his uninsured business was destroyed. In 1985, on the other hand, an earthquake centered 250 miles away from Mexico City killed at least 6,000 people there, including 1,000 who died in a single building collapse. See the difference?

Want to know what Davis is good at? Davis is extraordinarily good at feeding the narcissistic self-pity of some of the safest, most pampered people on Earth. Whenever I think of “Ecology of Fear” or “City of Quartz,” I think of all those SUVs parked in front of Gelson’s. Los Angeles is “a dystopian symbol of Dickensian inequalities and intractable racial contradictions”? Tell it to the Sudanese.

CHRIS BRAY

Santa Monica

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Your review of attacks on Davis offered many sly illustrations of the inability of his accusers to intellectually grasp his critique of the relation between social policy and the So Cal environment. Declaiming his analysis, one rightist think-tank genius suggested that Davis “could be writing about cars and be apocalyptic.” Ya think?

ANDREW TONKOVICH

Laguna Beach