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WHERE DO L.A. intellectuals go for a lively discussion? The wisecrack answer may once have been “New York,” but not anymore. When celebrated author Susan Faludi wanted to stage a trial-run for her national book tour, she headed over to the USC Faculty Center for a meeting of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities.
"If this ends up a disaster, I’ll cancel the book tour,” joked the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, speaking at a gathering of the elite 36-member institute. Her talk came only days after her latest effort – Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man – made the cover of Newsweek.
Faludi’s appearance was nothing un-usual for the salon designed, in the words of co-founder and Los Angeles Times Book Review editor Steve Wasserman, “to promote the cross-fertilization of intellectual life in L.A.”
Created last year, the USC-sponsored institute hosts twice-monthly luncheons that attract celebrated authors, academics, artists, museum curators and filmmakers to the pub at USC’s Faculty Center. Fellows schmooze over wine for half an hour before sitting down to a modest lunch enlivened with a brief talk by afellow or an invited guest.
“We say: ‘You have 20 minutes – what are the ideas you’re wrestling with?’ ” explains USC history professor Steven Ross, the institute’s other co-founder and author of Working Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America.
This is the place to hear UCLA theater professor Robert Israel discuss his set designs for new productions of Fidelio at New York’s Metropolitan Opera and I Capuleti e I Montecchi at the Los Angeles Opera. Or to get Los Angeles City Li-brarian Susan Kent’s spin on the future of libraries. Or to listen to cult expert Robert Jay Lifton untangle the twisted logic behind Aum Shinrikyo, the group responsible for releasing poison gas in Tokyo’s subway.
“L.A. is a major cultural center – we’ve got the Getty, MOCA, the Huntington, LACMA, USC, UCLA and Caltech – but the problem is, all these institutions lead isolated lives,” says Ross. “We’re trying to create a climate that brings together an eclectic mix of people.”
Glancing around a recent gathering, you couldn’t help but be dazzled by the select crowd. There was syndicated columnist and author Arianna Huffington (Picasso: Creator and Destroyer) kibitzing in the pub courtyard with author, filmmaker and USC cinema-TV associate professor Todd Boyd (Am I Black Enough for You? Popular Culture From the ’Hood and Beyond). Stephanie Barron, LACMA’s senior curator of modern and contemporary art, whispered at a table with Kenneth S. Brecher, the executive director of the Sundance Institute. Novelist Mona Simpson (Anywhere But Here) fretted over the fate of the American magazine with USC creative writing professor Carol Muske-Dukes (An Octave Above Thunder: New and Selected Poems) and writer-performer Sandra Tsing Loh (Depth Takes a Holiday: Essays From Lesser Los Angeles).
THE LOS ANGELES Institute for the Humanities – which meets the first and third Friday of the month – is modeled on New York’s Institute of the Humanities, founded roughly 25 years ago by a group of East Coast intellectuals, including Susan Sontag. The New York group also meets at a large, respected and centrally located urban campus – New York University.
“It’s the glamorous gathering place for academics and non-academic intellectuals,” says Jocelyn Baltzell, who served as associate director of the New York institution for a decade before agreeing to serve in the same capacity for the USC-based group. “We’re the upstart competitor.”
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