Every good book is essentially a mystery. What secrets might be revealed between the covers? Whose story is it that is being told? Where are we going? How will it all end? Can we ever really understand? Why is so much so easily forgotten? What is it that we are longing to remember?

Writer Esther McCoy (1904–89) arrived in Los Angeles in 1932 and reckoned it was the wrong place to be. She stayed, however, and for over fifty years her sharp-eyed writing explored the radical politics, modern architecture, and sidelined literary ambitions of the endlessly compelling city.

I’ve spent much of the summer thinking about AIDS and what I assume is called 'the politics of barebacking'. I know. Super fun-tastic. The photographs of Peter James solarize the sweet antithesis of all of that, although, if I were to put his work through the theoretical paces it deserves, I’d point out that he captures the male body in the sunset of its innocence, re: AIDS, when, in a desperate attempt to escape a virus, men, as depicted in popular culture (i.e., on the level of the imaginary), put all their attention into girding themselves with gym regimes and juicing on steroids for grander, quicker results.