Lionel Rolfe to Read from THE MISADVENTURES OF ARI MENDELSOHN at Skylight in LA, 3/30

Lionel Rolfe and Julia Stein will give a reading at Skylight Books on March 30, 2013 at 5 p.m. (1818 N. Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles). Rolfe will read from his new book, The Misadventures of Ari Mendelsohn, while Stein will read from her What Were They Like? For more information, see this link.

THE MISADVENTURES OF ARI MENDELSOHN: A Mostly True Memoir Of California Journalism, is a picaresque memoir by noted author and journalist Rolfe as he recounts the sexual and political travails of the irascible, blacklisted title character, a reporter still harboring his besieged idealistic belief in humanity's innate goodness and America's dubious potential for good amid a reality of avarice, pragmatism, cynicism, and materialism.

With his usual sharp self-deprecating wit and affable honesty, ROLFE describes Ari's astonishing array of encounters that run the gambit from the hilarious to the horrific, from the astute to the bewildering, from the desirous to the dangerous, from the death-defying to the life-affirming. As he searches for purpose in a life of drudgery and debacle, along the way Ari must contend with a Military Academy captain with an all-too-avid interests in the students under his "command"; old-time police reporters and the corrupt detectives whom they depend on for the inside scoop; old Stalinists and labor radicals; the long-established, well-entrenched defenders of America's conservative, God-loving majority; porn stars and gurus false and true and a holographic pin-up; and the all-too-real one-dimensional political operators and kingpins.

From losing his virginity; from the coffeehouses of the far left to the centerpiece of Los Angeles's abiding racism, the corrupt violent police headquarters known as the "Glass House," under the hard-line rule of virulent racist Police Chief William Parke r; from experiencing the Sierra God Machine to discovering love in a faraway land, the antithesis of America; from the freeways of the populace to the ocean-side estates of media moguls; from his spiraling descent to his awakening and retreat (which is also an advance of sorts), Ari is not only an entertaining and memorable creation, he is also a representative (though unwilling) "any"-man, caught in unfulfilling employment within a world of grandiosity and absurdity.

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