Photo
©2001 Bonnie Perkinson
 Memories
of Lord Yehudi colour a new novel by Lionel Rolfe, musician turned journalist.
In an exclusive interview in The
Music Magazine, Rolfe talks about the themes in Death and Redemption
in London and LA, his uncle's music and his own loneliness.You can buy
an electronic copy of Rolfe's new book at Deadend
Street. For a hardback edition, you'll have to wait till later this
year.
Unlike his recent Fat
Man on the Left: Four Decades in the Underground, which was published
by California Classics books, Death and Redemption
in London and L.A. is a powerful narrative that will especially appeal
to anyone who follows classical music and in particular has been curious
about the career of Lord Yehudi Menuhin. Menuhin was Rolfe's uncle.
But Death and Redemption is far more than just a story of interest to
lovers of classical music. While Fat Man was a collection of Rolfe's essays,
the new book tells the tale of a whole life that unfolds in the last year
of the last millennium. Nothing quite like it has ever been published before.
This is easily Rolfe's most compelling work.
The book is an examination of death, sex and love that should particularly
resonate with those millions of people who are facing major transitions
in their own lives. The passage of time -- of historical and personal change
-- as well as a strong sense of place is the context of the story. This
is, of course, a very personal story but it also is meant to be a very
universal one.
Rolfe's Death and Redemption in London and L.A. also is a contribution
to the literature of left politics and high art.
Rolfe's publishing house, California Classics Books, which he founded
with Nigey Lennon, will resume bringing new books out with Literary L.A.
III, scheduled for early in 2002. Copies of Fat Man are still available
to the book trade through SCB
Books Distributor, which handles Cal's national distribution. Individual
copies can be ordered from Amazon.com
or
Barnesandnoble.com.
A few of California Classics titles were written by Rolfe and Lennon
(her Being Frank:
My Time With Frank Zappa was easily Cal's best seller). Most,
however, were written
by other authors and were dedicated to Californiana. Rolfe and
Lennon also wrote with
Paul Greenstein a classic piece of Californiana with the publication
of Bread and
Hyacinths: The Rise and Fall of Utopian Los Angeles.
Rolfe's collected works and biography are at:
USC
Special Collections: Collection 164 - Lionel Menuhin Rolfe Collection
BOOKS
| FAT MAN ON THE
LEFT | LINKS TO ROLFE ON THE WEB
|
THE
ELSON MALL | EMAIL
 visitors
since March 16, 2001
Contacts: Victoria Berding,(323)
906-0262 for California Classics;
Kerry Slattery for Skylight
Books, (323)660-1175
LITERARY
L.A.
LIONEL
ROLFE'S BIOGRAPHY
Journalist and author
Lionel Rolfe grew up in European-influenced surroundings in Los Angeles.
Through the early postwar years, his mother, the late pianist Yaltah Menuhin,
hosted at an-home salon that offered a solace for musicians and other creative
artists-in-exile. Much of what Rolfe writes has its roots in his own childhood
impressions or the recollections of family members and visitors to his
boyhood home.
Lionel Rolfe's
books define the mecca that is Los Angeles culture. He is the author
of Fat Man on the Left: Four Decades in the Underground,
In Search of Literary L.A. and now a third edition of Literary
L.A.
He also co-authored
Bread and Hyacinths: The Rise and Fall of Utopian Los Angeles,
which has been purchased for a television miniseries. Various writings
were anthologized in Unknown California, Classic and Contemporary Writing
on California Culture, Society, And Politics (Macmillan 1985), and
On Bohemia: The Code of the Self-Exiled (Transaction/Rutgers 1990).In
1999 he wrote an ebook, Death and Redemption in London & L.A.,
for the online publishers deadendstreet com.
His newspaper and
magazine writings are housed in the American Literature Collection at the
University of Southern California¹s Doheny Library.
It can be accessed
on the Web at: http://www.usc.edu/isd/locations/ssh/special/Rolfe.html
Rolfe was born in
1942 in Medford, Oregon, but grew up in Los Angeles on the West Side and
in Long Beach, later attending Los Angeles City College and California
State University, Los Angeles.
His father, Benjamin
Lionel Rolfe, was an attorney and Workers' Compensation Appeals Court Judge;
his mother Yaltah was a concert pianist and the sister of the famed violinist-prodigy
Yehudi Menuhin.
Early memories of
his musical household were enhanced by extended visits to the home of his
maternal grandparents in Los Gatos, California. This led to a preoccupation
with the Menuhin dynasty, which became the subject of his first book, The
Menuhins: A Family Odyssey, in 1978, casting enough light into dark
corners to leave behind an estrangement between the nephew and his celebrated
uncle which never fully healed.
Meanwhile Rolfe became
a journeyman writing for outlying papers in Pismo Beach, Turlock, and Newhall,
before returning to L.A. where in the late Œ60s he had stint with Los
Angeles Free Press when it was still the counterculture paper-of-record.
Rolfe's abiding interest
in the bohemian world carries forward from the "Freep" and the residual
coffeehouse culture of the 70s. He later worked as a police beat reporter
for the San Francisco Chronicle and an editor at Psychology Today.
Of greater permanence
was the work Rolfe did at the end of the Œ70s for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner.
Writing regular feature articles for the Sunday magazine, he amassed a
sizable file on the lives of bygone California authors, which later appeared
in book form as his Literary L.A., published by Chronicle Books
in 1981. An alternative weekly, the L.A. Reader, was also home to
lengthy investigative articles on political and cultural figures, as well
as such favorite Rolfe topics as railroads and bookstores. Later in the
'80s, and "still wrestling with his Jewish identity," Rolfe wrote syndicated
articles for Israel Today and became editor of the city's second
oldest newspaper, the B'nai B'rith Messenger.
For the last several
years he has been an editor and reporter for City News Service, a Los Angeles
wire service.
His life and exploits
have been profiled in the Los Angeles Times Magazine and other periodicals.
It was in the early
Œ90s that Rolfe co-researched and co-wrote Bread and Hyacinths: The
Rise and Fall of Utopian Los Angeles, on turn-of-the-century urban
politics and the life of Socialist politician Job Harriman. That is the
book that has been optioned for a television miniseries.
With his wife Nigey
Lennon, he went into publishing under the imprint "California Classic Books."
His 1998 book, Fat
Man on the Left: Four Decades in the Underground, came out of a period
when he was writing op-ed pieces for the San Francisco Chronicle
and other papers. One of them was about Rush Limbaugh, and it was called "I'm the Fat Man on the Left." The book was an anthology
of favorite essays and portraits, expanded into a retrospective of his
work to date.
California
Classics Books
3941 Veselich Avenue, Suite
158,
Los Angeles, California 90039
Voice: (323) 906--0262 Fax:
(323) 906-0259
e-mail: calclass@earthlink.net
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