Read The Long Take by Robin Robertson Online

The Long Take Reviews

• 
  Hugh

  Winner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2018
  
  Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018
  
  This is my second book from the Booker longlist. I was already aware of Robertson as a poet having heard him on the radio and through a CD called Hirta Songs, a collaboration with the Scottish folksinger Alasdair Roberts that mixed songs and spoken poetry, telling the story of the last inhabitants of St Kilda.
  
  This book is a bold experiment - it has the narrative arc of a novel but it is largely told in free verse. At its Winner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2018
  
  Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018
  
  This is my second book from the Booker longlist. I was already aware of Robertson as a poet having heard him on the radio and through a CD called Hirta Songs, a collaboration with the Scottish folksinger Alasdair Roberts that mixed songs and spoken poetry, telling the story of the last inhabitants of St Kilda.
  
  This book is a bold experiment - it has the narrative arc of a novel but it is largely told in free verse. At its centre is a Walker, a veteran of the Normandy landings from Nova Scotia. The book starts in 1946 in New York, then follows Walker to Los Angeles where he finds a job as a newspaper reporter which also takes him to San Francisco, and the story finishes back in Los Angeles in the late 50s. It is largely a tribute to 50s film noir, and is full of film references that would have sailed over my head without the Notes at the end. There is also plenty about the paranoid political atmosphere of 50s America (which has obvious parallels), and the demolition of the older poorer parts of Los Angeles to make space for more car parks and roads.
  
  The foreground story is told almost entirely in verse, this is interspersed with prose fragments, some flashbacks to Walker's experiences in the war and his life in Nova Scotia, and a few dated diary entries.
  
  I am not normally a great reader of poetry but for the most part this was not difficult to follow, though it demands concentration.
  
  I am a little at a loss to know how to compare it fairly with the straighter novels on the list, and will look forward to the forum discussions. ...more
• 
  David

  Wow. I just got knocked down by this book and suspect I'll be seeing stars for quite some time. I'm a bit dazed and a lot dazzled. This Man Booker longlist entry seems to have all the elements one expects from a winner:
  
  Creative and masterful manipulation of form and content.
  
  Beautiful, evocative language (in this case applied to descriptions of bucolic Nova Scotia, modern warfare, urban sprawl, physical devastation, and a shattering of the soul.)
  
  Layer upon layer of nuance and allusion without los Wow. I just got knocked down by this book and suspect I'll be seeing stars for quite some time. I'm a bit dazed and a lot dazzled. This Man Booker longlist entry seems to have all the elements one expects from a winner:
  
  Creative and masterful manipulation of form and content.
  
  Beautiful, evocative language (in this case applied to descriptions of bucolic Nova Scotia, modern warfare, urban sprawl, physical devastation, and a shattering of the soul.)
  
  Layer upon layer of nuance and allusion without loss of focus or meaning.
  
  A surface story that is itself fascinating - spanning 1945 to 1958 - but which acts as the portal to a much deeper exploration of the ills which plague us today:
  
  Failure to support returning veterans of war
  
  The criminalization of the mentally ill
  
  Widening income disparity
  
  The resurgence of Fascism
  
  The prevalence of Racism
  
  The persistence of anti-Semitism
  
  The role of national paranoia in the promotion of xenophobia
  
  The objectification of women in the social and professional realms
  
  The destruction of the environment
  
  Political and Governmental corruption
  
  Pandering to corporate interests over civil need
  
  Each of these themes is highlighted through metaphor. As Los Angeles crumbles around its people, there is this reference to one's own sense of insignificance and succumbing to despair:
  
  "The dust falls everywhere, filling the long sunbeams with its gray sift; collecting in the glasses, the ice-trays, so every drink swims with it. He could see it, when he held his whiskey to the light, hanging there and drifting to the bottom, where it didn't matter anymore."
  
  As natural habitat is uprooted and supplanted by utilitarian structures, we are reminded of the spiritual losses which follow:
  
  "Building and demolition seem to happen here within the span of a human life - so citizens can either watch their own mortal decline, or see themselves outliving their cities. This is why I miss the island. Nature. We love nature because it dies, and then comes back to life. A resurrection we can believe in."
  
  And there is a bold and direct warning to any society that tolerates even subtle tyranny:
  
  "McCarthyism is facsism. Exactly the same. Propaganda and lies, opening divisions, fueling fear, paranoia. Just like in the thirties: a state of emergency, followed by fascism, followed by war. You've defeated Hitler. Can't anyone see you've made another, all of your own?"
  
  Just in case the parallels between America in 1954 and 2018 are not clear, Robertson helps the reader connect the dots in a footnote to page 162: "(Joseph) McCarthy's legal adviser was Roy Cohn... In the 1970s, Cohn was the friend, mentor, and legal adviser to Donald Trump."
  
  The most fascinating metaphor, however, is that of the cinematic long take: the filmmaker's Holy Grail. As applied here by Robertson, it seems to suggest one's ability to stand in a place of brokenness while looking far into a future of possibility and wholeness. For Walker and his comrades, this proves tragically elusive.
  
  I do have a few limited cavils. The journal entry sections in Manhattan feel far too poetic to pass for the voice of Walker at that point in his life. And I agree with GR friend Dan Friedman who points out that the litany of film noir classic scenes referenced in the central sections can feel a bit like window dressing. The descriptions of noir technique and the chiaroscuro of that moody genre, however, do not. Robertson's myriad renditions of Light and Shadow bind the reader to Walker as he loses himself in the threatening chaos of several undisciplined cities.
  
  Ultimately "The Long Take" is a deceptively poetic treatise on the parlous state of our world today. It is also, ironically enough, an American novel in everything but the nationality of its author. Is this the next Man Booker winner? I think it quite possible. ...more
• 
  Dan Friedman

  Robin Robertson’s The Long Take demanded a new type of reading for me. I started reading it as poetry or as Psalms, reading short passages slowly and then immediately rereading them. But at that leisurely pace, I soon realized that The Long Take would dominate my fiction reading for weeks or even months, leading me to spend the entire Booker season on this one novel alone. So while I started slowly, I finished it more rapidly, as a contemplative yet compelling read.
  
  The Long Take is multi-layered Robin Robertson’s The Long Take demanded a new type of reading for me. I started reading it as poetry or as Psalms, reading short passages slowly and then immediately rereading them. But at that leisurely pace, I soon realized that The Long Take would dominate my fiction reading for weeks or even months, leading me to spend the entire Booker season on this one novel alone. So while I started slowly, I finished it more rapidly, as a contemplative yet compelling read.
  
  The Long Take is multi-layered: Robertson wraps up so much, so well, and so carefully into his poetry. Starting The Long Take, I viewed it as a lovely ode to the largest and most iconic cities in post-World War 2 America. Robertson’s New York is exciting, seedy, slightly threatening. Robertson writes of an era when summertime air conditioning meant tenement tenants sleeping on their fire escapes or roofs:
  
  ”He’d sleep out on the roof, these nights
  
  and stare at this city
  
  that’s too big to measure,
  
  has too many windows to watch.
  
  And nobody sees or cares anyway,
  
  So nothing matters.”
  
  Robertson nails the random details of New York back then:
  
  The trees by the East River have things
  
  snagged in their lowest branches: clothes,
  
  fish-crates, ropes and sacks, bodies sometimes,
  
  people say, trapped there by the tides, the ice.”
  
  And here’s Robertson’s perfect description of Grand Central Station:
  
  ”The huge cathedral light angles down
  
  —in the long smoking buttresses—
  
  from the starred blue ceiling to the concourse
  
  and its information booth
  
  ornate in marble and brass,
  
  tiny as a pyx
  
  or a jewelry box.”
  
  The Long Take’s also a portrait of Walker, an emotionally drained Canadian veteran from Nova Scotia, intent on losing himself in the U.S. Walker wanders from New York, to Los Angeles, to San Francisco, and then back to Los Angeles. As The Long Take proceeds, it becomes more and more apocalyptic. Walker’s no longer just lost and wandering, he’s deteriorating. As Robertson describes another character, ”I just slipped.” Hired by a newspaper to report on the homeless in San Francisco, he envelopes himself their demi-monde and falls into alcoholism and personal shame at his war. Here’s Walker, in conversation with his friend Billy:
  
  ”They talked about San Francisco, about Skid Row, there and here,
  
  then from nowhere he said: ‘You had a girl back home,
  
  in Nova Scotia. You gonna see her again?’
  
  Walker took a long pull on his bottle,
  
  tapped out another cigarette, lit it,
  
  drew in deeply; blew. ‘I can’t, Billy.
  
  The island. My family. Annie. It’s all gone now.’
  
  He stared hard at the floor.
  
  ‘I can’t let her see me. What I’ve become.’”
  
  Returning from San Francisco to Los Angeles,
  
  ”He wanted delirium, and he wanted it now,
  
  taking a standing drink in any bar he could”
  
  Walker’s apocalypse isn’t only personal, it’s also an apocalypse of LA urban renewal:
  
  ”’See, it’s all about functionality now,
  
  which is speed, efficiency and profit,
  
  They call it a clean sweep
  
  to eradicate crime—which means blacks—to fumigate
  
  and disinfect the city against disease
  
  —which means the black and the poor—
  
  to demolish slums and blighted areas—which means
  
  the homes and communities of the black and poor and old.’”
  
  The Long Take’s a novel with its flaws, of course, two of which gnawed at me a bit. Robertson’s sense of American cities is good but far from perfect. How could anybody who knows New York, Chicago, or San Francisco write this: American cities have no past, no history. Sometimes I think the only American history is on film.” American cities don’t have the histories of English cities such as London, Oxford, or Cambridge, but American cities do have more recent histories easily accessible to those interested enough to look. Robertson often name-checks period Hollywood films from the 1940s and early 1950s. While these seem to be accurate enough, sometimes it feels as if Robertson is indeed just name-checking them rather than fully incorporating them into his narrative.
  
  The Long Take is a wonderful novel, with musical poetry and many delights. It often succeeds with a cinematic sweep, reminding me especially of Jules Dassin’s 1948 classic The Naked City. 4.5 stars.
  
  Postscript: After you’ve read The Long Take, I recommend watching some of its name-checked films. Viewing the films enhances appreciation of Robertson’s novel, and Robertson’s novel enhances appreciation of the films. Of course, Robertson’s novel is lovely without the films, and the films are lovely without Robertson’s novel. ...more
• 
  Sunita

  4.5 stars, rounded up.
  
  I don't read a lot of poetry and the last verse novel I read was Vikram Seth's Golden Gate, which came out many years ago. But I was intrigued by the reviews and when it made the Booker longlist I moved it up the TBR. Robertson is a highly acclaimed poet, one of two people who has won the Forward Prize for poetry in three different categories.
  
  This is a true verse novel, in my opinion. It is written primarily in poetic form (with short prose sections) but it has the struct 4.5 stars, rounded up.
  
  I don't read a lot of poetry and the last verse novel I read was Vikram Seth's Golden Gate, which came out many years ago. But I was intrigued by the reviews and when it made the Booker longlist I moved it up the TBR. Robertson is a highly acclaimed poet, one of two people who has won the Forward Prize for poetry in three different categories.
  
  This is a true verse novel, in my opinion. It is written primarily in poetic form (with short prose sections) but it has the structure and beats of a prose novel. The narrator is Walker, a Canadian veteran of World War II. We meet Walker in New York City in 1948, where he has landed because he feels he cannot go home again and pick up his old life, not given the man he feels he has become. Walker is still suffering psychologically and emotionally from his war experiences, and he is very much a loner. He decides to move west to Los Angeles, where he lives in an SRO and obtains a job on a left-leaning daily newspaper.
  
  Walker is drawn to the skid row community, many of whom are veterans, and he strikes up a friendship with Billy, an African-American veteran and activist. Billy introduces him to members of the community, and Walker gets to know the people in his neighborhood, many of whom are old and in financially precarious circumstances. He spends much of his time walking the streets of LA, from downtown to the ocean. The veteran and senior community he is part of is in stark contrast to the image of Los Angeles as new, presentist, and ever-growing, with construction wiping out what past existed. This perspective is both challenged and reinforced by the film industry: challenged because film noir in particular exposes the corrupt and seedy underside of the construction boom, and reinforced because it can't help showing Los Angeles in a glamorous light.
  
  Walker spends a couple of years in San Francisco, documenting the conditions of veterans and other homeless and precarious residents there. San Francisco is a very different city, but it shares the Californian trend of reinvention and endless renewal. Robertson brings a new and important perspective to our image of the 1950s as a time of economic growth and positive social change, showing people who paid a price for these changes.
  
  The poem is described as a "noir narrative" and it amply fulfills that promise. The noir aspects come both from the detailed portrayals of the streets and buildings of Los Angeles and California and the many films and filmmakers who are depicted in the text. Walker is constantly surrounded by film locations and meets several directors. If you are familiar with this milieu, then it deepens the atmosphere of the story, but I can imagine that it could be confusing to people who aren't noir film buffs or knowledgeable about California's politics and economy in that period.
  
  The story has two arcs: Los Angeles' transformation at that time (as Joni Mitchell sang, they paved paradise and they put up a parking lot) and Walker's psychological deterioration. The people he meets are displaced and/or succumb to their physical and other war wounds, and the landscape he walks is transformed. Buildings are razed, hilltops are removed or flattened, all in the name of economic progress. The most ambitious and openly racist coworker at the newspaper ascends through the hierarchy. At the same time, Walker is more and more consumed by memories of his wartime experiences, especially those around D-Day, and his drinking goes from manageable to dangerous. The last section of the book has grisly war flashbacks and neighborhood destruction marching side by side, and it gets overwhelming, but Robertson never loses control.
  
  Robertson is a Scottish poet who is also an important and influential editor at Jonathan Cape in London, so the setting is far from his milieu. But he does an amazing job of bringing 1940s New York and 1950s California to life. I lived in New York City for several years, spent all my adolescence and chunks of my adult life in the San Francisco area, and I've visited Los Angeles regularly. I'll leave it to the Angelenos to weigh in on how well he represents their city, but as a visitor I thought he portrayed it beautifully, and the New York and San Francisco sections were spot on.
  
  It's also a stunning poem. I'm far from an expert on poetry, but even I could see the control and accomplishment on display. At times the rhythm reminded me of street poets and preachers, and at other times I was stopped dead in my tracks by the beauty of a particular image. It's very uncompromising in its style, and was regularly reminded of how powerful poetry can be in describing both beauty and ugliness.
  
  Robertson clearly did a huge amount of research on the settings, and there are notes at the end to provide further information and context for many of the characters and allusions. But I recommend reading without reference to those the first time, just to let the flow of his words wash over you.
  
  ...more
• 
  Maddie C.

  “ I’m interested in films and jazz. Cities.’
  
  ‘Cities?’
  
  ‘Yes. American cities.’
  
  ‘What about American cities?’
  
  ‘How they fail.’ ”

  
  
  The Long Take is an incredibly raw look at the post-war experience, illustrating the particular trials and tribulations felt after the second world war ended, specifically as the veterans of the war returned to their home countries and tried to rebuild their lives. Written in verse, an epic of mini proportions, Robin Robertson lyrical writing conjures beautiful images

  “ I’m interested in films and jazz. Cities.’
  
  ‘Cities?’
  
  ‘Yes. American cities.’
  
  ‘What about American cities?’
  
  ‘How they fail.’ ”

  
  
  The Long Take is an incredibly raw look at the post-war experience, illustrating the particular trials and tribulations felt after the second world war ended, specifically as the veterans of the war returned to their home countries and tried to rebuild their lives. Written in verse, an epic of mini proportions, Robin Robertson lyrical writing conjures beautiful images of the american cities, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, while discussing the very real issues that arose after the war was over, and that became contemporary in this day and age.
  
  

  “We won the war, but we’re living like we lost it.” (*)

  
  
  The story we follow comes from the point of view of Walker, one of the “lucky ones” that managed to survive the war. A canadian from Nova Scotia, Walker can’t bring himself to return home, preferring instead to try and start anew, an attempt to strip himself of the horrors he has lived, done and witnessed.
  
  

  “ ‘You had a girl back home, in Nova Scotia. You gonna see her again?’
  
  Walker took a long pull on his bottle, tapped out another cigarette, lit it, drew in deeply; blew. ‘I can’t, Billy. The island. My family. Annie. It’s all gone now.’ He stared hard at the floor. ‘I can’t let her see me. What I’ve become.’ ”

  
  
  

  “ He could not call her back to his life: which is a horror, which is the dead calf in the bank-head field, a black flap bubbling with maggots, ugly and wrong. ”

  
  
  It is clear, through instances like the quote below (in a metaphorical way, but there’s also some very real examples of Walker being startled by sudden and loud noises), that Walker is struggling with PTSD, and as the book advances and his journey does too, we begin to get more and more often transported to his recollections of war, narrated to us through the sporadic moments of prove in this otherwise novel in verse.
  
  

  “ This is not the worst. The worst is the hall of mirrors where you catch sight of yourself, twisted, swollen, unrecognizable. (...) It’s the worst thing in the world, catching sight of yourself. ”

  
  
  Starting in New York, Walker witnesses for the first time the reality of many veterans who have returned home: with an incredible keen eye and jarring imagery, we get to know the dark side of society, through the image of a city, not only the beautiful, clean and rich side of it, but also, and mostly, the dark corners, the filth and the misery, the prostitution and the abandoned boroughs where most veterans come to live, homeless, after they are unable to reintegrate back into society.
  
  After, he is transported to Los Angeles, where he finds a job working as a journalist to the Press, which in turn lead him to San Francisco. However, Los Angeles truly is the main character in this book; New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco: the cities are characters all of their own, alive, changing, decaying.
  
  

  “And then he felt a presence behind him. Turning round, he saw the city, stretching out below.”

  
  
  It was that sense of pulsating atmosphere that really enhanced the experience for me; the idea that the city is always watching, always changing, growing, like a human, falling, crumbling, like Walker does.
  
  

  “Building and demolition seem to happen here within the span of a human life – so citizens can either watch their own mortal decline, or see themselves outliving their cities.”

  
  
  

  “The city is constantly changing, blocks being bought and sold, demolished and rebuilt, so it has no memory: it knows only this timeless present.”

  
  
  In a text that relies mostly on the beauty of its language, Robertson excels at it spectacularly. Although poetry is not my strongest suit, I have always had the idea that poets have a way with words that excels, seers through the pages and manages to touch the heart of the reader. The Long Take did nothing if not confirm that theory: even if some of the images were shocking and unpleasant, Robin Robertson’s unflinching fragility made it easier to swallow. For example:
  
  

  “(...) one slash opened the black guy’s buttock like a plum, then this neat stab to the throat and with it a twisting rope so hot it steamed as it splashed on the cobbles; the blood that ran out of him till he ran out of blood.”

  
  
  Taking this quote to continue the discussion of the book’s themes, besides the issue of homelessness and displacement that, while not in this particular context, will always be a contemporary and, unfortunately, long-lived issue, Robinson also tackles the tensions that follow the war: the 50s and 60s were eras of incredible racial and political tension, particularly in the United States, where the social rights movement made history and the cold war would start to brew. We get glimpses of those important issues in this text, a passage about McCarthyism that really stuck with me:
  
  

  “ ‘McCarthyism is fascism. Exactly the same. Propaganda and lies, opening divisions, fueling fear, paranoia. Just like the thirties: a state of emergency, followed by fascism, followed by war. You’ve just defeated Hitler. Can’t anyone see you’ve made another, all of your own?’ ”

  
  
  And if we look at the current political and social climate in the US particularly, right now, we can see how contemporary all these issues are, even if, again, played out with some minor differences:
  
  

  “ America has to have its monsters, so we can zone them, segregate them, if possible, shoot them. ”

  
  
  However, what made me think of this novel as an incredibly powerful achievement in portraying the reality of the 50s was the apparent amount of research the writer did in order to make it authentic: long descriptions of the city transport you right back into them, even if you’ve never visited them, even if you can’t know how they look now or in the fifties. But while that shows the amount of dedication and love for the american cities cited above, it can also be a detriment to the book and the reader who isn’t all that interested in the noir and the film era often associated with this period. There are an excruciating amount of little “cameos”, nods to movies and directors and scenes and actors of Old Hollywood, that while charming to those who know them, can just be overwhelming to those who don’t (I fell somewhat in between). Those, at times, kept me from fully enjoying the book and the character's journey. For that reason, I don’t think this is a book for everyone.
  
  I couldn’t complete this review without mentioning another small aspect of this book that completely won me over: the beauty in it isn't exclusive to the prose. As a photography enthusiast, I loved the pictures at the beginning of every chapter, which helped the continuous transportation to another times, another atmosphere.
  
  Overall, The Long Take is a tremendous achievement that should be read and enjoyed, a book that needs the readers full attention and commitment but that, in the end, will absolutely pay off.
  
  (*) All the quotes should be written in verse but for some reason my eBook didn’t retain the format of the text so although the transcribed quotes appear to be written in prose, know this is not how they are presented in the book. ...more
• 
  Nicky

  4.5* rounded up. Thoughts to follow once I get my head around it and after I see the author in person next week (it was pretty bleak but great).
  
  Updated 30/8: After seeing an interview, hearing Robin Robertson read in his dramatic Scottish accent and speaking to him about this book and other’s I give all the stars. 5**
  
  I really feel I need to read this again with his voice in my head and appreciate all the little nuances and themes he discussed.
  
  These were his thoughts that struck me the most:
  
  - Thi 4.5* rounded up. Thoughts to follow once I get my head around it and after I see the author in person next week (it was pretty bleak but great).
  
  Updated 30/8: After seeing an interview, hearing Robin Robertson read in his dramatic Scottish accent and speaking to him about this book and other’s I give all the stars. 5**
  
  I really feel I need to read this again with his voice in my head and appreciate all the little nuances and themes he discussed.
  
  These were his thoughts that struck me the most:
  
  - This time representing the end of the American Dream. i.e. pulled into a war they were trying to avoid, then followed by Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Trump (his words ;-)).
  
  - He needed to get Walker to LA as it is a “hopeless city, a place of despair”and described the veterans as "tattered flags in the sand" - the last of a community, banded together to try find that camaraderie they had in the trenches. They preferred the streets as “before” (purity) was a place they no longer deserved to be due to the sins of war. ...more
• 
  Caroline

  This book speaks to my heart. Achingly beautiful.
  
  

  And on to Alameda and Chinatown
  
  till he found the path that climbed to there Stone Quarry hills
  
  up through fields and houses of the new pueblo to the high ravines,
  
  Chavez, Sulphur, and Cemetery, Solano and Reservoir,
  
  to Mount Lookout in between.
  
  And he stood there, far over City Hall--
  
  over the lights of Los Angeles--
  
  as if the whole sky and all the stars had fallen:
  
  displayed, spread out below
  
  in a flickering maze,
  
  this bed of moving embers.

  
  
  Robertson’s pro This book speaks to my heart. Achingly beautiful.
  
  

  And on to Alameda and Chinatown
  
  till he found the path that climbed to there Stone Quarry hills
  
  up through fields and houses of the new pueblo to the high ravines,
  
  Chavez, Sulphur, and Cemetery, Solano and Reservoir,
  
  to Mount Lookout in between.
  
  And he stood there, far over City Hall--
  
  over the lights of Los Angeles--
  
  as if the whole sky and all the stars had fallen:
  
  displayed, spread out below
  
  in a flickering maze,
  
  this bed of moving embers.

  
  
  Robertson’s protagonist in this book length poem is a WWII veteran from Newfoundland. The invasion of Normandy and the butchery he experience have left him traumatized, and he is unable to return to his rural life. He leaves first for New York City, moving from there to Los Angeles, without prospects and without resources. Alcohol is a daily companion in the pursuit of oblivion.
  
  In Los Angeles he settles into the downtown life of single room occupancy hotels, skid row, and the bars. He finds a writing job at a newspaper, first covering local crime and eventually securing approval of a series of articles on the downtown homeless. And he walks, endlessly, night after night. Restless with his war demons. We edge closer and closer to the core of his nightmare until deep in the book we realize how war turns on its participants, horrifying them and then alienating them from themselves.
  
  The man, Walker, arrives in Los Angeles and is given an impromptu tour by Billy Idaho, a denizen also back from WWII, an apparently autodidact intellectual and observer. but black and thus even more vulnerable than Walker. (This is well known to most Californians, but probably essential for a UK audience):
  
  

  "This was always Skid Row. Always will be.
  
  Just north of here’s Little Tokyo,
  
  called Bronzeville during the war.
  
  Anyone halfway Japanese got sent to the camps in ’42.
  
  and the blacks came up from the South, looking for work
  
  in the war industries, moved right into those empty rooms;
  
  eighty thousand some say, sleeping in shifts--
  
  hot-bedding in Bronzeville, it was called.
  
  When the war was over, the jobs were over
  
  and the blacks moved south and the Japs were moved on.
  
  Just like all the ethnics--all zoned out.
  
  The Mexicans got pushed east and the Chinese north.
  
  That’s what they do here--demolish houses and build freeways.
  
  It’s the only city planning there is--segregation.
  
  And greed, of course.”

  
  
  Around him, the oil companies and the automakers connive to destroy downtown, leveling the old and criss-crossing it with freeways. Parking lots replace rooming houses; the poor end up on the streets. At the front of the book is a detailed map of about thirty downtown blocks in 1950, with each building referred to in the poem identified; everything is rooted in the events of the fifties.
  
  

  He wanted to see the ocean again, but it was all just concrete:
  
  highways, surface streets, slums, then a toy town called Lakewood..
  
  It was oil wells, lining up on Signal Hill, and more
  
  out east to Huntington Beach, and west to Wilmington:
  
  geometric forests right down to the sea--
  
  derricks, pumpjacks, power plants,
  
  mostly tapped-out wells, rusted in the salt air,
  
  but hundreds of the jacks still moving, like shore-birds feeding,
  
  dipping their heads to the sand.

  
  
  Echoing the homeless crisis in Los Angeles today, he watches friends and acquaintances, either on the street or only one crisis away from it, slip below the waterline.
  
  Running throughout the novel are Walker’s encounters with film crews in New York City as they create the iconic noir movies of the time. Grime and violence permeate the screen and the reality around him.
  
  American cities have no past, no history. Sometimes I think the only American history is on film.
  
  I was born in the eastern suburbs of Los Angeles in 1951, and lived there until I was seven. Then I returned to the west side of Los Angeles in 2002 for about nine years. So as I read I felt the truth of the atmosphere of the fifties in my bones with the intensity and distortion of childhood memories, and I knew what was left of old Los Angeles downtown, and what was left of the fifties, and what was being done once again after 2000 to ‘revitalize' it with a new opera house and new skyscrapers. Robertson gets it so right you can’t believe he isn’t an Angeleno himself. Yes, didactic at times, perhaps occasionally too explicit about how repetitive today is of a prior cycle, but powerful.
  
  And you can’t believe he isn’t from Newfoundland. Interspersed with the war and urban scenes are memories of the coast and fields of home.
  
  The land is closed: by snow all winter, them by summer trees. We are hidden from sight all year by white or green. The river--coined with light, intricate with the nymphs of the mayfly--is a bed of coiled silver, springs and movements, an escapement of minnows on the face of the water; the long shadows of trout lying like clock-hands under the stones.
  
  This is now one of my very favorite books. Personal, of course, but also a true, true, and timely book about how America mows the vulnerable under, how war warps life beyond recognition, and how devastatingly beautiful our world can be in the midst of it all. ...more
• 
  Will

  I keep bumping this one up. Now a full 5 stars.