Mike Davis: 1946–2022
October 25, 2022 6:42 PM Subscribe
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I read City of Quartz quite a while ago now and it changed the way I looked at the built environment around me.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 6:50 PM on October 25, 2022 [11 favorites]
I read City of Quartz quite a while ago now and it changed the way I looked at the built environment around me.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 6:50 PM on October 25, 2022 [11 favorites]
<3... Amazing contributions. I was struck by the recent interviews where he shared he started writing because he was such shit at organizing.. Let us all aim to turn our failures into something incredible.
posted by latkes at 6:50 PM on October 25, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by latkes at 6:50 PM on October 25, 2022 [6 favorites]
🌎
posted by lalochezia at 6:52 PM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by lalochezia at 6:52 PM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
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I was blown away the first time I heard him on The Dig. I think it was this episode.
posted by ropeladder at 6:59 PM on October 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
I was blown away the first time I heard him on The Dig. I think it was this episode.
posted by ropeladder at 6:59 PM on October 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
I started with people like Chomsky and Zinn, but he was my favorite.
posted by MillMan at 6:59 PM on October 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by MillMan at 6:59 PM on October 25, 2022 [3 favorites]
As a new resident of LA when City of Quartz came out, I owed to that book whatever understanding I got of that strange, shifty place.
posted by homerica at 7:32 PM on October 25, 2022
posted by homerica at 7:32 PM on October 25, 2022
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posted by doctornemo at 7:35 PM on October 25, 2022
posted by doctornemo at 7:35 PM on October 25, 2022
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posted by vorpal bunny at 7:45 PM on October 25, 2022
posted by vorpal bunny at 7:45 PM on October 25, 2022
He was something else and left something of real value, which not all of us can say. A hell of a thinker, writer, and human being.
And like other people here City of Quartz radically opened my eyes to the built environment around me.
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posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 8:36 PM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
And like other people here City of Quartz radically opened my eyes to the built environment around me.
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posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 8:36 PM on October 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
Very confused reaction when I first read the title - "but Miles Davis has been dead forever...."
And yes, City of Quartz should be pressed into every new Angelenos hand... the other hand should still get a Thomas Guide.
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:03 PM on October 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
And yes, City of Quartz should be pressed into every new Angelenos hand... the other hand should still get a Thomas Guide.
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:03 PM on October 25, 2022 [1 favorite]
Thanks to this FPP, I'm browsing the Essential Mike Davis collection on Versobooks. Am looking for ebooks specifically - would anyone have any comments on Verso or alternatives, before I proceed to purchase? I'm starting with City of Quartz, Ecology of Fear, and Planet of Slums. Any other recommendations?
posted by cendawanita at 9:08 PM on October 25, 2022
posted by cendawanita at 9:08 PM on October 25, 2022
Oh fuck. What a loss for all of us.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:16 PM on October 25, 2022
posted by aspersioncast at 9:16 PM on October 25, 2022
City Of Quartz came out when I was an undergrad and it pretty much gave me, I dunno, second sight? Something like a high-level macro vision of how everything worked as expressed on the civic level here in Los Angeles. All of his books are foundational reading.
posted by quartzcity at 3:41 AM on October 26, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by quartzcity at 3:41 AM on October 26, 2022 [4 favorites]
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posted by GenjiandProust at 4:23 AM on October 26, 2022
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:23 AM on October 26, 2022
I'm still not over Late Victorian Holocausts. I don't know how you read something like that, and ever look at the period the same way again.
It's funny, this has been a really bad few years for people I read suddenly dying--that sort of parasocial loss taking some kind of real toll--but by announcing his death well in advance, Davis gave us time to think about his place in the world, gave time for retrospectives to be written...I don't know, I appreciate the process, I guess I'm saying. I do hope all the articles bring people to read him.
posted by mittens at 4:54 AM on October 26, 2022 [5 favorites]
It's funny, this has been a really bad few years for people I read suddenly dying--that sort of parasocial loss taking some kind of real toll--but by announcing his death well in advance, Davis gave us time to think about his place in the world, gave time for retrospectives to be written...I don't know, I appreciate the process, I guess I'm saying. I do hope all the articles bring people to read him.
posted by mittens at 4:54 AM on October 26, 2022 [5 favorites]
In my first year at university, a grad student instructor from LA assigned us City of Quartz along with Joan Didion's "Trouble in Lakewood" as required reading. We also watched Falling Down (trailer on YT), which, whew. I had never even been to California at that point. It took me 20+ more years to understand what the instructor was trying to show us. But I'm so grateful she made that introduction. Mike Davis was the real deal.
posted by sockshaveholes at 7:03 AM on October 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by sockshaveholes at 7:03 AM on October 26, 2022 [1 favorite]
Late Victorian Holocausts is a really important book IMO, somewhat under-read because it's not his usual beat. The main point is that during the major famines of the mid-19th century in the British Empire, there was always enough food to keep people alive but the food was withheld to be resold elsewhere, to control people and out of a eugenicist ideological conviction that giving starving people food would make them lazy and self-indulgent. (I tend to assume that this was mere motivated reasoning to cover "let those people die, I would be better off if they were dead".)
The book is of course specific to the places and times it covers, but the basic hypothesis is an extremely useful one to have in your toolbox. It absolutely, absolutely describes how things work during the pandemic. The problem is people, not stuff. It's always people. Stuff is a solvable problem.
posted by Frowner at 8:41 AM on October 26, 2022 [8 favorites]
The book is of course specific to the places and times it covers, but the basic hypothesis is an extremely useful one to have in your toolbox. It absolutely, absolutely describes how things work during the pandemic. The problem is people, not stuff. It's always people. Stuff is a solvable problem.
posted by Frowner at 8:41 AM on October 26, 2022 [8 favorites]
I would say that he is probably one of the most influential left writers of the nineties/early-mid 2000s. When I volunteered at a radical bookstore, his books sold steadily and we always stocked pretty much all of them. It was commonplace for anyone with a general interest in cities or California or food justice to have read them. His books are both accessible and relatively specialized and, I think, are a good way for people to gain confidence as readers and thinkers. He may not have died on a barricade or in any romantic place or time but I think he did as much for revolution by his books anyone could expect to do and his work will truly live a long time after him.
posted by Frowner at 8:55 AM on October 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Frowner at 8:55 AM on October 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
Any other recommendations?
City of Quartz is, as this thread indicates, probably his best-known work. I would recommend Planet of Slums, Prisoners of the American Dream and The Monster Enters (which has an updated bit on the COVID-19 pandemic; most of the book is about avian flu).
I think Late Victorian Holocausts (which was well received at the time; see review by famine scholar Amartya Sen) overemphasizes the culpability of imperial powers in causing these various famines. He takes his theoretical framework largely from Michael Watts' argument in Silent Violence that the introduction of markets to rural societies causes famine, which isn't a position that has stood up well, imho. Not to say that the various imperial powers didn't make famine worse in various ways (and better in others!), but famine was a regularly occurring phenomenon in these peasant societies prior to foreign intervention of whatever sort. (I'd recommend David Arnold's book instead as a starting point on famine if you want to get into that subject.)
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 10:10 AM on October 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
City of Quartz is, as this thread indicates, probably his best-known work. I would recommend Planet of Slums, Prisoners of the American Dream and The Monster Enters (which has an updated bit on the COVID-19 pandemic; most of the book is about avian flu).
I think Late Victorian Holocausts (which was well received at the time; see review by famine scholar Amartya Sen) overemphasizes the culpability of imperial powers in causing these various famines. He takes his theoretical framework largely from Michael Watts' argument in Silent Violence that the introduction of markets to rural societies causes famine, which isn't a position that has stood up well, imho. Not to say that the various imperial powers didn't make famine worse in various ways (and better in others!), but famine was a regularly occurring phenomenon in these peasant societies prior to foreign intervention of whatever sort. (I'd recommend David Arnold's book instead as a starting point on famine if you want to get into that subject.)
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 10:10 AM on October 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
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posted by socialjusticeworrier at 10:58 PM on October 26, 2022
posted by socialjusticeworrier at 10:58 PM on October 26, 2022
Mike Davis wrote The Case for Letting Malibu Burn for Environmental History Review back in 1995. It's still incredible.
Also the co-written Set the Night on Fire is fantastic. Your local library should have a copy (apologies to people in Multnomah County, I checked out the ebook last week but should be returning it this weekend!).
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:54 AM on October 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
Also the co-written Set the Night on Fire is fantastic. Your local library should have a copy (apologies to people in Multnomah County, I checked out the ebook last week but should be returning it this weekend!).
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:54 AM on October 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
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posted by Golden Eternity at 7:18 PM on October 27, 2022
posted by Golden Eternity at 7:18 PM on October 27, 2022
Just wanted to add that Verso is making the ebook of City of Quartz free for download right now.
posted by toastyk at 9:27 AM on October 28, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by toastyk at 9:27 AM on October 28, 2022 [5 favorites]
Mike Davis was an incisive thinker and a gutsy, vivid storyteller. His books made me love and fear California in brand new ways, and they fundamentally changed how I think about cities and environments.
I'm grateful for what he created, and I will miss his writing presence in the world.
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posted by marlys at 12:44 PM on October 28, 2022
I'm grateful for what he created, and I will miss his writing presence in the world.
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posted by marlys at 12:44 PM on October 28, 2022
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