Mike Davis, the southern California writer, described by some as a ‘delusional lefty’, branded, ‘prophet of doom’ has died. The 60s man bowed out after a long struggle with esophageal cancer on October 25. He was 76.
The Guardian in an interview with him in August this year informed its readers that the writer has stopped treatment for esophageal cancer and began palliative care, giving him an estimated six to nine months to live.
Well known for his book, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, “examining how contemporary Los Angeles has been shaped by different powerful forces in its history,” he told the British daily, “For someone my age who was in the civil rights movement, and in other struggles of the 1960s, I’ve seen miracles happen. I’ve seen ordinary people do the most heroic things. When you’ve had the privilege of knowing so many great fighters and resisters, you can’t lay down the sword, even if things seem objectively hopeless.”
Mike Davis called Raymond Chandler a fascist. He was never a fan of Joan Didion. A favourite of his has been Myron Brinig, who wrote this funny takedown of LA bohemian circles circa 1930 called Flutter of an Eyelid.
About himself, he told The Guardian I have pretty old-fashioned values – you don’t hide terminal illness, but you don’t broadcast it either. I’ve been bombarded with love and deeply moving messages, but at the same time, there seems to be some competition of who can write the best obituary. Then I get this stuff: ‘Can I bring my girlfriend down next week? She wants to meet you before you die.’ There’s somebody who wanted to bring their students on a trip and have me tell them about my legacy. It’s a very strange situation.
He was faulted for ideological bias and for various errors and fabrications — some acknowledged — but his dark takes on Los Angeles and broader subjects often proved justified. “City of Quartz,” published in 1990, condemned the race and class divides of Los Angeles and labeled the city a “carceral” society, prison-like and overseen by an oppressive police force. The police beating of Rodney King in 1991 and the riots following the 1992 acquittal of his attackers made his book seem like prophecy, notes The Associated Press, describing him as a Marxist environmentalist.
Verso Books expressed extreme sadness over the death of its friend and comrade, the pioneering historian of the US working class and fierce critic of the economic, political, and military apparatuses of the US state machine and the brutalities of empires in general.
The Nation in its obit described him as the ‘radical hero and family man,’ a strange blend. He belongs to an endangered species of writers who are fast getting extinct.
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