Before his illness, the two traveled through the backcountry of San Diego County to pursue Davis’ secret life as a rockhound and his son’s love for botany. He gestured to his 18-year-old son, James, who had been silently reading a Nathanael West novel nearby. This is not the time or history that my kids should inherit, you know?” But now, there is a certain sense of doom. An attempt to elicit righteous anger against those whom we should be righteously angry against. “Although I’m famous as a pessimist, I really haven’t been pessimistic,” he continued. “But it’s an almost inconsolable loss to me that I know that I can’t reach these kinds of people anymore,” due to political polarization. “I never doubted for a moment that people could change,” he said, noting how many of those friends - all working-class whites - joined him in antiracist rallies during the 1960s. “I’m not really that concerned about vindication and any of that.”īut the man this newspaper once said “isn’t so bad,” at the same time it cut him down in a nearly 6,000-word front-page story, did admit he’s more worried than perhaps he has ever been.Įarly in our conversation, Davis showed me a photo of a group of men he’s known since second grade, all from the conservative “heart of darkness” that he joked was the El Cajon area in the 1950s. “What - as a good communist I should have taken pride being attacked by all these people?” Davis remarked at one point. Nor did he take satisfaction that most of them now lie in the dustbins of history while he is more celebrated than ever, as humanity goes to hell. He bore no ill will for his many critics despite years-long campaigns painting him as little better than a fact-twisting civic Eeyore. We both agreed that the novelist William Saroyan is an unappreciated genius who’ll probably never experience a renaissance. Mayor Richard Riordan, and war stories from his days as an activist. There was a funny memory about former L.A. He lectured on the Okie old guard of Bell Gardens and deemed Joe Biden a “sheer disaster.” I informed him of the latest ongoings with L.A. I had some questions but set them aside as we chatted for hours.
His trademark white beard and short-cut hair shone with the vigor of life not yet ready to be left.
He was gaunt, but his eyes and voice and intellect were as fierce and clear as ever. He wore a T-shirt with a Celtic harp encircled by the words “Unrepentant Irish Bastard.” Others condemn author’s research and accuracy.ĭavis, 76, sat on a couch, his wife - artist and professor Alessandra Moctezuma - by his side.
Sparks Literary Fistfightīook: Supporters praise ‘Ecology of Fear’ as brave.
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