This book contains twenty-one short stories set in Los Angeles. Their length runs from about 1,200 words to about 5,000. Most use a third-person narrator. Each story stands on its own and includes no reference to others in the collection. Turner’s style is clear, simple and often terse. The book’s subtitle indicates the thrust of his stories: Tales of Los Angeles on the Wrong Side of the Tracks. For Turner that pretty much means downtown as it was between the world wars. The stories usually focus on a single character and a single event. Each title identifies the protagonist and gives an idea of the problem he or she faces, for example, “The Waitress Who Lost Her Sailor,” “The Reporter Who Became a Hero,” and so on. The characters are just plain folks. They come from different ethnic backgrounds but share much in common. They don’t have much money. They live in beat-up apartment buildings or rooming houses. Excitement seldom enters their lives. Turner generally aims at what might be considered reportage, just recounting events without judgments or trickery. He’s not merely telling shaggy dog stories, however. He wants readers to sympathize with his characters. Sometimes, in fact, he seems to stage events to illustrate the difficulties that people have in making connections with one another. Sentimentality occasionally creeps in, but all in all the book succeeds in presenting the glamourless L. A. that most fiction set in the city misses. (The book, incidentally, has slipped out of copyright and can be downloaded at the Internet Archive.)
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TURN OFF THE SUNSHINE
This book contains twenty-one short stories set in Los Angeles. Their length runs from about 1,200 words to about 5,000. Most use a third-person narrator. Each story stands on its own and includes no reference to others in the collection. Turner’s style is clear, simple and often terse. The book’s subtitle indicates the thrust of his stories: Tales of Los Angeles on the Wrong Side of the Tracks. For Turner that pretty much means downtown as it was between the world wars. The stories usually focus on a single character and a single event. Each title identifies the protagonist and gives an idea of the problem he or she faces, for example, “The Waitress Who Lost Her Sailor,” “The Reporter Who Became a Hero,” and so on. The characters are just plain folks. They come from different ethnic backgrounds but share much in common. They don’t have much money. They live in beat-up apartment buildings or rooming houses. Excitement seldom enters their lives. Turner generally aims at what might be considered reportage, just recounting events without judgments or trickery. He’s not merely telling shaggy dog stories, however. He wants readers to sympathize with his characters. Sometimes, in fact, he seems to stage events to illustrate the difficulties that people have in making connections with one another. Sentimentality occasionally creeps in, but all in all the book succeeds in presenting the glamourless L. A. that most fiction set in the city misses. (The book, incidentally, has slipped out of copyright and can be downloaded at the Internet Archive.)
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Great review as always. If you go by abebooks.com, this is a fairly rare book, but that might be the case with a lot of the books you review. I'd like to get my hands on one of these but not have to mortgage the house. If you have any tips, I'd like to hear them.
Posted by: laurie powers | November 02, 2009 at 01:50 PM
Acquiring this particular book is actually not a problem. I should have added the link in the first place. As for the other books, I usually rely on ABE or Bookfinder, though occasionally I obtain them from interlibrary loan and copy them. I recommend this approach only for the truly obsessed, however.
Posted by: Don Napoli | November 02, 2009 at 08:24 PM