Dear Bill, I've read both of Davis' big books and a number of his essays including some of the more obscure stuff. Where ever I go, this side of the Mississippi, I see a little of what Davis is talking about here and there. It's about America, Bill. Your email pal, Tom L. "William S. Lear" wrote: > On Thursday, March 18, 1999 at 19:16:31 (-0500) Doug Henwood writes: > >There's a good page of links about the Mike Davis brouhaha at > ><http://www.thelocus.com/LA/davis.html>, including Marc Cooper's fine > >article in Davis' defense and to Brady Westwater, the Malibu real estate > >guy who set out to ruin him after reading Davis' "Let Malibu Burn." > > Following this to the H-Urban list, I find this from Philip Ethington, > who seems like someone relatively sympathetic to Davis: > > Casual, incomplete, or cavalier citations are deeply problematic > in scholarly discourse, and especially so when the author is > making huge, dramatic claims. And further, we on the Left are > betrayed when these gaffes allow the Right to devalue Davis's > overall project, which I have been supporting for many years now. > Effective radical scholarship must be factually unassailable, or > else Malibu realtors with pseudonyms and axes to grind can topple > the whole edifice of progressive social science. A great deal is > at stake here: representing Los Angeles and all of the urban > world in the late capitalist era. We must decide whether we want > our urbanist research to be based of thin reeds or solid pilings. > We also have to decide whether we will accept at face value the > factual claims of our most gifted writers, or whether we are a > community of critical thinkers. > > Quite so. > > Of course, Ethington does not accuse Davis of fabrications, nor of > admitting to such, something about which I'm still keen on finding > out. > > Bill
