Honors Map

 

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Honors - Novel Two

          For my second Honors novel, I read Helter Skelter, by Vincent Bugliosi (with Curt Gentry). I read the book by recommendation of my mother, who enjoyed it some years ago. While this book was, as presented to me, a very interesting read, it didn’t necessarily provide the insight to the sixties in Los Angeles that I had expected. While the last book I read, Listen to the Lambs, by Johnny Otis, provided a lot of time-specific details and context, Helter Skelter focused on the details of the case – which, in retrospect, should have been expected. I found it interesting, though, that some of the context in this book related back to the Watts Riots – the subject matter of my last book.

“The three-day heat wave had begun to break a couple of hours before, about 10 p.m. on Friday – to the psychological as well as the physical relief of those Angelenos who recalled that on such a night, just four years ago, Watts had exploded in violence” – written in reference to the night of the 1969 Manson murders on Cielo Drive.

          This quote was on the first page of the book, and really helped to set the scene. In fact, I really enjoyed the introduction of the book, and felt that it helped to draw you into the story and become interested. Helter Skelter starts out – after listing captions to later-shown images, along with a list of people who appeared in the book – with a description of the night of the murders. Only, the occurrence is told from various perspectives – from the views of unknowing neighbors, campers, and strangers. Together, you get a general idea of what outsider’s experienced, and it gets you curious in what’s to come. From there, you get right into the gritty details of that night, and those that followed.

          I think that part of what made this a successful book was that the author – Vincent Bugliosi – was the prosecuting attorney in the Manson trials. Because of this, you really in-depth and knowledgeable look into what, otherwise, could have been a somewhat mysterious happening. I was skeptical, going into reading this book, about how the quality of the writing would be, due to the fact that the author is not necessarily an author by trade. I was, however, pleasantly surprised at how flowing and well-told the story of Helter Skelter was. One segment that stood out to me as well-written and interesting was:

“Sometimes fear can be measured. Among the barometers: In two days one Beverly Hills sporting goods store sold 200 firearms; prior to the murders, they averaged three or four a day.”

           The quote goes on with more details, but it just stood out to me as being both informative and extremely relevant to the understanding of the feeling of Los Angeles during this time. Another aspect of this book that I appreciated was the photographs that were included. I was originally going to purchase this book on my Nook, sans-pictures, but I’m really glad that I went with the physical copy that included them. While you can understand a lot by reading about the characters and scenes, seeing what actually happened really gave more depth to the story.

          While I didn’t necessarily learn much about Los Angeles in the 1960’s from this book, I certainly thought that it was a worthwhile and interesting read. Even though I’d vaguely heard about the Manson murders previously, this book really went deep inside the case and gave me a ton of information I hadn’t had previously.   

Honors Timeline

 

1960 – Los Angeles becomes the third most populous city in the United States, with 2,479,015 people.

1962 – Author Charles Bukowski, who spoke of L.A. as his favorite subject, began performing live readings of his writings on Los Angeles radio station KPFK.

1965 – Currently the largest art museum in the Western United States, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art opens.

1965 – The Watts Riots – a civil disturbance taking place in the Summer of ’65 in Los Angeles – caused over 3000 arrests, 1000 injuries, and 34 deaths.

1968 – Large, spontaneous walkouts by high school students occurred in support of the Chicano Movement in East L.A.

1968 – Johnny Otis publishes his novel, Listen to the Lambs, about the Watts Riots.

1968 – In California for campaigning, Robert Kennedy is assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

1968 – Author Joan Didion’s (whose novel Play it as it Lays was named one of TIME’s 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005, and remains a classic of Los Angeles literature) published Slouching Towards Bethlehem, a nonfiction piece about her experiences in California.

1969 – A group of students at UCLA publish a monthly political newspaper entitled Gidra. This newspaper continued on until 1974, and was known as the ‘Voice of the Asian American Movement’.

1969 – Manson family murders occur, leading to the 1974 book Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi.

Trancript - Wordle

Audio Story Ten

http://www.radiodiaries.org/ricky-in-buffalo-grove-illinois-what-if-god-2/

          The story starts out with Ricky introducing you to himself, his family, and his home. He lives outside of Chicago, and you meet his mom, Celeste, and his two-year-old sister, Dawn. He brings you to his room, shows you his closet, and tells you that he likes dinosaurs and comics. He then shows you his radio, and flips through the stations, until it comes to rest on ‘One of Us’, which he tells us is, ironically, one of his favorite songs. This is where you learn that Ricky’s dad is an atheist – his license plate says atheist, he’s been on talk shows, and he’s even tried to get ‘Under God’ taken out of the Pledge of Allegiance. Other than that, Ricky says, their life is pretty normal, even though the kids at school think that being an atheist means that he worships the devil. He then goes to interview his family members, starting with Dawn. When he asks her what dad told her that God was, she recites ‘Make Believe’. He then moves on to his mother, who tells us that she is agnostic. Lastly, he goes to his father, who tells him everyone is born an atheist, but some are taught to be superstitious, and that God does not exist. When asked if he cares what his son was, he says that of course he does, but that Ricky has free will to decide (but then goes on to say that he tries to sell his son on the merits of atheism, and feels that he has succeeded). The story ends with Ricky saying that he doesn’t think that kids should just automatically have their parents’ religion, and that he’s not really an atheist, he’s mostly just confused. As ‘One of Us’ comes back to play, Ricky says that he’ll probably just end up being whatever religion his wife was.

          I really liked how real this audio story felt. You can tell that it’s not recorded professionally, but is obviously done by a kid – there’s a lot of ambient background noises, and sometimes the sounds are too quiet, or too loud. I thought that including the song, ‘One of Us’, really added to the story, and helped tie all of the ideas and feelings together. By interviewing multiple people, and gaining multiple perspectives, the story got a depth and character that it wouldn’t have otherwise. I was surprised at how set Ricky’s father was on his ideals, even going so far as to say (when asked, what happens when you die?) that you rot, and become food for the maggots. It really doesn’t seem to be a positive environment for your kid to be that adamant about anything. Even though the father says that he’s not trying to force atheism on his kids, he obviously is – what else would you call teaching a two-year-old to say that God is make-believe? All-in-all, I thought this story was really interesting, and well-made.

Audio Story Nine

http://storycorps.org/listen/stories/mary-morris/

          In this story, Mary Morris conveys how her husband, Thomas, died in 2001, due to exposure to anthrax. He was a postal office worker, and had been for twenty-eight years in Washington D.C., and worked the night shift (he’d get home early in the morning, and they’d go out together to eat breakfast). One day, he comes home and doesn’t feel very well. The doctor tells him that he most likely had the flu, but, several days later, he has to be taken to the hospital, where he dies – about a week after first being exposed to anthrax. Mary then tells of how she lived alone after that, and how it took a while to get used to it. Her voice seems like it begins to crack up a little bit when she talks about never hearing his voice again, but she either recovers, or an edit was made. Despite this, the story ends on a positive note, and music plays to signify its closure.

          I liked how this recording started out with just a little tidbit about how the couple met – about how she knew he was a good man because of how he treated his mother. Although not necessary to advance the story, it really helped to define the couple’s relationship, and provide context to the following story. The cuts throughout were very smooth and unnoticeable, and the story seemed to be told in a clear and straightforward manner. I was surprised at how positive she was at the end, when she said that it was only by God’s grace that only two postal workers lost their lives because of the anthrax scare. I thought that this was a really nice ending to an otherwise sorrowful story, and lightened the entire thing up considerably.

Honors - Novel One

          Commonly known as the “Godfather of Rhythm and Blues”, Johnny Otis was, among many things, an American singer, songwriter, and musician. And, in 1969, with his publication of ‘Listen to the Lambs’, he became an author. This is the book that I chose to first read for my honors project, as a look into the Watts Riots that took place in Los Angeles in 1965. Not only did Otis’ novel give me a glimpse back to that time period, but it also served as an interesting read about one man’s experiences in dealing with racism in America.

          Despite being the child of Greek immigrants, Johnny always considered himself to be black – ‘environmentally, psychologically, culturally, emotionally, and intellectually’. There wasn’t one contributing factor to this, but rather the culmination of his life’s experiences. In the book’s preface, Otis writes, “As a kid I decided that if our society dictated that one had to be either black or white, I would be black.”  He continues on life, as outlined in this book, feeling this way – he goes on to marry a black woman, plays with other black musicians, and lives in black neighborhoods. And, when the Watts Riots come about, you can guess who he sides with.

          This novel evolved from a letter that Johnny Otis wrote about the riots to a friend. Within the book, this letter, along with a second one, is included, and you can feel the stark difference to his regular writing. The structure is all over the place, and dotted with ellipses, but the message gets through and is a very real and natural from of his expression. I feel that the inclusion of these personal notes made the book a stronger one. The rest of the book is a mixture of feelings and ideas – from outside accounts of the riots, to stories from his past, to his take on everything that has happened thus far.

          To me, the most interesting (and relevant) parts of this book were those pertaining to the Watts Riots. Otis conducted interviews of those who took part in the riots, and put them – word-for-word – into this book. By sharing the telling of such a large and significant story, I think that you were really able to get a better understanding of the entire picture. He provided the interviews of five different individuals that experienced these riots, and each had a unique perspective on the incident. One segment told of a shop-owner who got arrested for no particular reason, while dropping of a mother at her home, while another tells of a reporter feeling conflicted. Read together, in conjunction to Otis’ writing, I found this section to be one of the more powerful and interesting ones. In addition, I really enjoyed Johnny’s description of Watts –

“Like any other spot on earth whose inhabitants are perpetually locked in mortal combat with poverty and affliction, Watts is shot through with visual evidence of its plight. And even when the blemishes and the squalor cannot be readily picked up by the eye, they can be felt. You can almost cut with a knife the rage that this imposed ugliness generates. In the more densely populated and consequently shabbier neighborhoods, this grim and unlovely emotion pervades the atmosphere like a noxious gas. But, on the other hand, in Watts, as in any other spot on the earth where the human spirit refuses to yield, there is a deep and startling beauty.”

          Although the section about the Watts riots piqued my interest the most, I enjoyed the rest of the book, as well. Some of the parts fell a little flat, however – mostly where Otis is trying to be poignant and reflective. It just didn’t seem to fit his style of writing, necessarily. You can tell that he is a storyteller, and when he gets into his life experience, that’s when you really get involved. A good portion of his book contained his retelling of things that happened to him in the past, from his upbringing, to the discrimination he experienced and witnessed, to the music he created, to the life he lived. And all of it really captured and held my attention.

          I ended up thoroughly enjoying this book, which is somewhat surprising because I really had no expectations for it. I didn’t know who Johnny Otis was prior to the book, and, while the book painted a beautiful picture of his beginnings, it didn’t really get into when he became well-known. When I looked the author up after, and learned of all his achievements (e.g. he discovered Etta James), the book became all the more impressive. All in all, I think that ‘Listen to the Lambs’ really gave me a good understanding of the Watts Riots, as well as the time period.