Blog: There's A 'Make Believe' Edendale Too

Los Angeles lacks the human presence on the streets that large cities have.  This city is at the end of America: socially fragmented and spatially dispersed.  It sometimes seems as if this city exists without people. 

One of the pockets of vibrant urban life in Los Angeles includes the neighborhoods of Silver Lake and Echo Park, which once comprised the real district of Edendale where silent film comedy history began. 

Long serialized on Lionel Rolfe’s blog Boryanabooks  -- http://boryanabooks.com/ --  the imagined Edendale is a tribute to the people of Echo Park, Silver Lake, Toonerville, Frogtown, Red Hill and Bohemian Hill.  Edendale is available as a Kindle eBook.  http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-eBooks/b?ie=UTF8&node=1286228011

The characters in the made-up Edendale come from the Black Sea, from a shtetl in Ukraine, from slavery in the Southern States, from Japan, from the Polish enclave in Hopewell, Virginia, from Bulgaria, from the island of Curacao, and from Mexico. They fall in love, read Ina Coolbrith’s poetry, sing in a scratchy old voice, dry clean, press and sew clothes, sell rags, drink malted milk, swim in the Pacific Ocean, live homeless along the river, practice law, play the piano and the violin, teach school children, research in a library, take the train to Union Station, soldier in World War II, fly into the ocean, go mad, take acid and hallucinate, and are struck by a hit-and-run driver. Some of the characters die, and their survivors attend the funerals and say bad things about the departed.

Jesus Dionisius Hernandez-Rangel created the cover for the fictional Edendale using a photograph from Hollywood historian Mark Wanamaker's collection, with Mark's permission.