Wide Eyed in La-La Land

By John Elson

Dazzling in its diversity, sprawling across more than 1, 000 square miles, Los Angeles is not unlike the elephant of the fable that puzzled the blind men . How can one possdibly define a place that gave the world Mickey Mouse and Marilyn Monroe, the Watts riots and the Mansion murders, not to mention the kosher enchilada? Los Angeles is a metropolis of 85 cities with no "center of gravity", as Peter Theroux writes in one of the witty, observant little essays that make up Translating LA (Norton; 271 pages; $21). Its user- unfriendly downtown center resembles Gertrude Stein's famous description of Oakland. (Where is the there?) Born as a city of immigrants, Tinseltown, the Rainbow City, Iowa-by-the-Sea -- the sobriquets are legion -- remains one: children in its public schools come from families that variously speak 93 languages. Some of them even know English.

Boston-born, Theroux in 1985 became an "accidental resident" of the city he calls "a whole flat planet with a Venusian veil of smog" after having spent ten years in the Middle East. He bought a tiny condominium in unfashionable Long Beach, best known as the final berth of the retired liner Queen Mary and as a popular haven for lesbians. The many bars where the ladies hang out, Theroux writes, "could be spotted by the combination of women waiting in line to get in and mystified sailors (from the local naval base) watching warily from across the street. The servicemen were seeking places with lots of women and few men, but an inner voice was telling them that this was too good to be true."

Theroux worked sporadically at translating Arabic novels into English. ("From this he makes a living?" muttered one Angeleno who overheard the author being introduced at a Hollywood screening.) On behalf of the Long Beach public library, he also tutored illiterates, who in turn guided him to some of the area"s more exotic landmarks. On his own, Theroux discovered the La Brea tar pits, the world"s largest mastodon graveyard, which conatins what he calls a "cynical metaphor" for Los Angeles: the skeleton of a woman who died about 9,000 years ago."Her skull was bashed in by a blunt object: this first Angeleno, the wall label tells you, was also LA's first known homicide victim. "

Translating LA has chapters on Forest Lawn and the earthquakes, the misery of the city"s black ghettos, the unspeakable wealth of Beverly Hills. As a writer seeking to capture the spirit of place, Peter Theroux is a kinder, gentler clone of his older brother Paul (The Happy Isles of Oceania, Riding the Iron Rooster.) . For all their sparkle, the latter's travel books are suffused with a sour misanthropy : the natives are usually too noisy or too smelly or otherwise lacking in the finer human attributes.

Peter Theroux, by contrast, genuinely likes the Angelenos and their homeland, whose eccentricities he describes with easy learning , deadpan humor and precise, evocative imagery. Of the largely homosexual enclave of West Hollywood, he notes that "it must have a birthrate only slightly above Vatican City"s ." Entering the ocean near Santa Monica "was like stepping into the small tentacle tips of a monstrous octopus." To Theroux, "every third wave rolled in like an arched emerald wall, rearing up with a thin white crest -- the oceanic equivalent of a cobra spreading its hood, and nearly as un-nerving."

How lucky is Los Angeles to have a biographer who can write as well as that.