Digital Ink Los Angeles

Many times over the last few months and years have the works of Malcolm Gladwell been mentioned on and offline.

Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers - front cover

He’s a writer of prolific research, and it’s a pleasure — in this time of disingenuous talk about liberal media and libel reporting — to find a journalist who provokes the issues on a grander scale. Gladwell has found himself on both of sides of the socio-political coin, defending his scholarship and promoting his viewpoints.

At the least give credence to his seminal works, which all provoke thought leadership and creative logic: The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers.

Malcolm Gladwell‘s information can be found in its social-media entirety at: Gladwell dot com

Beautiful day.

Nice setting.

World-renowned writers.

Cool books.

You can view their web site here:  LA Times Festival of Books!

Born:
Denver
April 8, 1909

Died:
Los Angeles
May 8, 1983

Ask The Dust (1939)
“Los Angeles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town!“

John Fante wrote a book to the spirit of baseball that pulls at your heart strings — Wait Until Spring, Bandini.  It’s about many things, but it serves to announce the maturity of a young man in an adult world, with a King Solomon-like pronouncement of “This, too, shall pass.”  The young man exorcises his demons by praying to the gods of baseball, anticipating the leathered gloves, tarred wooden bats, sprouting grass and tilled dirt will revive his dimmed spirit.

His second novel, Ask The Dust, is an ode to Los Angeles — old, pre-war Los Angeles, with its desert winds and immigrant menagerie.  It’s an anecdotal tale, and it speaks to the desire to struggle with your dreams, to embrace your existential world, and to persevere.  It’s a novel of heartbreak, but also of swelling hope.

John Fante was born 100 years ago today.  Steinbeck befriended him and Bukowski brought his books back to life.  He was a great writer, not for his turn of phrase or elegant sentences, but because he called upon his common man to see the world he inhabits as a world of unlimited possibilities in the midst of poetic suffering.

Happy 100th, You Sad Flower in the Sand!