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A revisionist argues that historians have turned the authoritarian, conformist Puritans into reflections of their own complex, Harvard-educated selves
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IS MIKE DAVIS' LOS ANGELES ALL IN HIS HEAD? | PAGE 1, 2, 3
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"Ecology of Fear" catapulted Davis from fringe-leftie-intellectual status to the cultural mainstream. It won many favorable reviews (with some dissents, including D.J. Waldie's essay in these pages) and was on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list for 12 weeks (joined during the same period by "City of Quartz"), peaking at No. 1.

By rights, Davis should be basking in his success. But recently a gadfly has appeared in the ointment -- a gadfly named Brady Westwater. Westwater is a Malibu realtor -- an almost laughably perfect occupation for a Davis nemesis -- and third-generation Angeleno who has cast himself as "Ecology's" post-publication fact-checker and Davis' personal tormentor.

The eccentric Westwater is an unlikely catalyst for the growing questions about Davis' scholarship. In fact, Westwater isn't even his real name; he adopted it years ago as a nom de plume and declines to reveal his real name. Co-workers say he can be found in his office at all hours, often working on his computer or leafing through his voluminous files on L.A. Westwater's interests range from art and architecture (he loves the modernist architecture Davis despises, and is obsessed with defending it) to the history of the city.

I asked Westwater to take me on a walk (a real one) through Bunker Hill, the redeveloped area that Davis cites as a scary, "Prisoner"-like model of urban-planning malevolence. Westwater delights in pointing out the inaccuracies in Davis' account. He waltzes up to each glass-sided building and fairly sings, "No metal doors! No locks! No pedways!" On a ride up Angel's Flight, the short funicular railway that connects Bunker Hill with the mostly working-class shopping district at its bottom, Westwater happily points out that, contrary to Davis' assertion that Bunker Hill was created to exclude unruly people of color, he's one of the only white people in the car.

In both "Ecology of Fear" and "City of Quartz," Davis portrays Bunker Hill as an inaccessible fortress where guard staff command consoles that operate bulletproof roll-down doors. He based his portrayal of the hill on his experience during the 1992 riots, when he was there -- but he leaves the impression that the 1998 Bunker Hill is the same place. (Even during the riots, it seems more likely that Bunker Hill escaped the rioting because it was unfamiliar -- and elevated -- terrain than because of remote-controlled gates.)

I saw a different place. First, we couldn't find any bulletproof doors. It turns out Davis isn't referring to the building entrances, but to metal doors in the ground floor parking structures -- not quite as "Metropolis"-like. Bunker Hill's skyscrapers were wide open, even the Sunday after Thanksgiving. It was a holiday weekend, and Bunker Hill was humming. Dozens of Latino families, their shopping at Grand Central Market complete, rode up Angels Flight to wander the lawns and terrraces, their children playing beside them. A group of 50 German tourists lingered near the Water Garden, an outdoor amphitheater that is often filled with live music and dance. A well-to-do Anglo couple pored over the brochure of a downtown walking tour. Bunker Hill is indeed elevated, but it's not segregated. Far from being a walled fortress, it's a cluster of skyscrapers connected by public space.

Westwater insists it's his love of L.A., not his vested interest in promoting the city, that underlies his obsession with debunking Davis. Whatever his reasons are, however, there's little question he's obsessed. Westwater blasts off repeated faxes to editors, accusing Davis of everything from changing his story about where he was born to mistaking the location of the Los Angeles Times. In a 23-page missive, which often reads like those religious tracts you find tucked under your windshield wiper, Westwater virtually challenges Davis to a duel, claiming that "of the heavily footnoted and researched facts" in "Ecology of Fear," "not just a handful, not just a few dozen here and there, but many hundred (and hundreds) of them -- were simply made up."

Westwater scoffs at Davis' claim that Los Angeles is battered by El Niño rainfalls of "unrivaled" ferocity. He disputes his claim that the Westlake area of L.A. has the highest burn rate of any city in the country. He challenges Davis' definition of tornadoes, the subject of the chapter "Our Secret Kansas." He mocks Davis' gaffe in "City of Quartz" in which, during a discussion of the battle between the Jewish Westside and the Gentile downtowners, he identified Howard Ahmanson, a right-leaning Christian, as Jewish. (Davis says he has admitted the mistake.)

Perhaps most significantly, Westwater claims Davis' version of the history of Bunker Hill is false. Davis presents the new financial district as the work of the Committee of 25, a star chamber of Los Angeles power brokers whose sole mission was to keep out the lower-class rabble who rioted in Watts in 1965. But Westwater says the committee was well-known and was formed in 1952, well before the Watts violence. Even more damningly, Westwater claims that Davis got these facts right in a much earlier essay, then changed them for his new book.

Most journalists passed on Westwater's manifesto. But Jill Stewart, a columnist for the alternative weekly New Times Los Angeles, adopted the cause. In an essay titled "Peddling Fear," Stewart presented Westwater's allegations as fact. She matched Davis' pugilistic style jab for jab, calling him a "city-hating socialist raised in a remote desert town so small it no longer exists."

After Stewart gave Westwater's rantings a public voice, the Internet got sucked in. A piece about Westwater's critique on the Web site Suck has ignited a raging flame war about Davis' scholarship. "I can barely express my feelings on the whole Mike Davis fiasco," a subscriber wrote. "I've had nightmares about it. I bought into 'City of Quartz' so thoroughly, and then was blown away by 'Ecology of Fear' -- when in the latter, there were lies I should have immediately spotted based on facts I myself knew! Instead I was thinking, 'Wow, I must be remembering wrong.' There's an important lesson here about hero worship, I suppose."

What may turn out to be the most damaging story about Davis, however, was a sympathetic one: the L.A. Weekly piece that outs Davis for fabricating an interview. MacAdams sounds surprisingly genial about the journalistic breach. "We were standing together at the Fremont Entrance to Elysian Park, a place I had never been," he writes. "Though we never actually talked, the words he put in my mouth made me sound like I knew a lot more about the L.A. River than I actually did. I told him to go ahead with the piece just the way it was."

Whether MacAdams' account of this is just a coincidence, coming as it does on the heels of Stewart's denunciation, or an attempt at spin control ("Oh that Mike, we know how he likes to exaggerate to get the story"), the Weekly piece swiftly joined the New Times tirade in fax machines and e-mail servers far and wide; admirers, detractors, acolytes and academics have joined the debate. There's a definite political tinge to the discussion: The reputation of one of America's few avowedly Marxist writers is at stake.

Getting to the bottom of the controversy isn't easy. Certainly Davis' fabricated interview does not inspire confidence. But an admittedly cursory examination of some of the points at issue leads one to the conclusion that while Davis is highly selective in his research and sometimes out-and-out wrong, he is not the utterly incompetent (or unethical) figure presented by Westwater. Whether the larger worth of Davis' work is invalidated by his tendentious approach is a question that readers must answer for themselves.

Let's start with Westwater's assertion that Davis is wrong when he says that Los Angeles County's San Gabriel Mountains have recorded the highest rainfall in the world. Douglas Sherman, a USC professor with expertise in natural disaster, backs Davis up. "He's right," Sherman said. "The San Gabriels have measured the highest-intensity rainfall in the world. When the rain lasts long enough, it flushes into the L.A. Basin and has very serious effects."

Westwater's more important criticism, that Davis got the entire history of the Bunker Hill development wrong, is harder to evaluate. Westwater may be right that Davis got some of the facts and chronology wrong, but several experts in Los Angeles history and planning pointed out that Davis' deeper analysis is not susceptible to a simple factual debunking. The jury remains out on his Bunker Hill analysis.

But there's no question that Davis makes, shall we say, an imaginative use of facts. Take his alarmingly elastic definition of Los Angeles. At times, he's talking about the city itself. Other times, he includes terrain stretching from southern Orange County all the way to northern Ventura County. To a New Yorker, this could well be Los Angeles, but Davis knows better. He also says there are 2,000 gangs in L.A. The Los Angeles Police Department's gang unit counts 400. Even Los Angeles County, which includes 88 cities, falls 150 gangs short of Davis' figure.

Davis claims L.A. has 500 gated communities. The city's Department of Planning says 100. And Davis talks about violent crime without ever reporting the five-year decline in such crime countywide. In fact, the murder rate in Los Angeles has dropped 50 percent since 1992. You won't find even a footnote for that in "Ecology of Fear."

Even the photographs in the book take liberties. A shot of New Hampshire Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard does look like a ghost town -- unless you know L.A. Shadows falling on Wilshire Boulevard suggest the photo was taken just after sunrise, when even Times Square might look deserted.

Do these errors and distortions raise serious questions about Davis' whole project -- or are they relatively unimportant details? "I think it is fair to say his book is a work of imagination," says Kevin Starr, California state librarian and himself the author of numerous books about the state. "I'm not saying it is false, but when you present materials transformed by imagination as fact, then you'll be liable to the kind of corrections he's getting. I am not surprised that an anti-Davis faction would rise up."

N E X T_ P A G E .|. Davis: A priest without faith?