My Amazon Review of Mike Davis' and John Wiener's "Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties"

1960's LA Through Red-Tinted Glasses

Mike Davis and John Wiener have given us a way too long (800 pages in the print edition) history of the rise of the Left in the Los Angeles of the 1960's. In telling us everything they researched and remembered it is hard for the lay reader to separate the important from the incidental. The book would have been greatly helped by a sharp-penciled editor.

In the interests of full disclosure I knew Mike Davis in the early 1970's and had more than a passing participation in the political and cultural events the authors discuss. In May 1965 I watched the late and great Little Richard perform at the California Club in Watts. Two months later Watts burned in the rebellion. The small group I was with were the only white people in the audience. Later in January 1967 I watched The Doors at Whisky-A-Go-Go “set the night on fire.”  To be sure I lived in the sun, sand and surf Los Angeles, not in its racism plagued underbellies of South Central and East Los Angeles.

To me the main theme of the book is that Los Angeles was in the vanguard of the peace, women’s, gay rights, African-American and Chicano movements of the 1960's and that members, of which Davis was one, former members and friends of the Communist Party were in the leadership vanguard. Indeed Davis was mentored by the doyenne of Los Angeles communists, Dorothy Healey. As an aside why anyone would join the Communist Party in 1968 is beyond me. From my small vantage point I just didn’t see all that communist influence and if it were true it would make believable all of the right wing paranoid fantasies of that era.

Where the book is good is its description of the US-Black Panther rivalry of that time that led to the assassination of two members of the Panthers on the UCLA campus and the intense pressure put on the Panthers by the F.B.I. It is particularly good at describing the risings in African-American and Latino high schools protesting the racism of their teachers and administrators. The authors also note that the police raid on the gay Black Cat Tavern predated Stonewall by two years.

What the book lacks is the music. It misses the spirit of the age which was typified by sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll. It is way too serious because many of us had smiles on our faces and songs in our hearts. Importantly the book lacks any discussion on the impact of the SDS split on 1969 on the overall movement and there is no after-action report as to why things fell apart. To use the language of the day there is really no criticism/self-criticism. Simply put what went wrong?

Further many of the ideas promoted by the Left of today and now I view as reactionary. Davis and Wiener talk about the coming of the Crawford decision which implemented crosstown busing in Los Angeles which intensified the racial polarization of the city. Instead of advocating for ethnic studies programs in the universities which led the way to marginal degrees, the movement should have advocated for stronger curriculums with emphasis on math, science and economics.  But alas that did not happen.

I am sure better books will be written on the Los Angeles of the 1960's, but if a reader wants to slog through all 800 pages they will get the big picture with way too much minutia thrown in.

For the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R46U3E2PHN8UW/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv