The history of forgetting: Los Angeles and the erasure of memory

Los Angeles is a city which has long thrived on the continual re-creation of its own myth. In this work, Norman Klein examines the process of memory erasure in LA. Using a mixture of fact and fiction, the book takes on an anti-tour of downtown LA, examines life for Vietnamese immigrants in the City of Dreams, imagines Walter Benjamin as a Los Angeleno and, finally, looks at the way information technology has re-created the city, turning cyberspace into the last suburb. Norman Klein is the editor of Fragile Moments: A History of Media-Induced Experience, and the author of Seven Minutes: The Life and Death of the American Animated Cartoon.