The cutting edge of the post-punk Los Angeles scene is captured in a collection of sixteen stories and a novella that chronicle the interconnected, alienated lives of a dozen young members of that scene

Life After Death and Other Stories

Literature & Fiction

Compo, Susan

United States

Faber&Faber

The cutting edge of the post-punk Los Angeles scene is captured in a collection of sixteen stories and a novella that chronicle the interconnected, alienated lives of a dozen young members of that scene

Life After Death: And Other Stories (New American Fiction Series)

Set in the subcultures of Los Angeles and London, this book casts an unflinching eye on garbled gossip columnists, poets, jaded pizza delivery boys and the would-be vampires of the goth-rock circuit.

Malingering

Though he never reached the lead actor status he labored so relentlessly to achieve, Warren Oates (1928–1982) is one of the most memorable and skilled character actors of the 1970s. With his rugged looks and measured demeanor, Oates crafted complex characters who were at once brazen and thoughtful, wild and subdued. Friends remember the hard-living, hard-drinking actor as kind and caring, but also sometimes as mean as a blue-eyed devil. Married four times, partial to road trips in his RV affectionately known as the "Roach Coach," and famous for performances for directors ranging from Sam Peckinpah to Steven Spielberg, Warren Oates remained a Hollywood outsider perfectly suited to the 1960s and 1970s counterculture. Born in the small town of Depoy in rural western Kentucky and reared in Louisville, Oates began his career in the late 1950s with bit parts in television westerns. Though hardly lucrative work, it was during this time Oates met renegade director Sam Peckinpah, establishing the creative relationship and destructive friendship that produced some of Oates's most unforgettable roles in Ride the High Country (1962), Major Dundee (1965), and The Wild Bunch (1969), as well as a leading part in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974). Though Oates maintained a close association with Peckinpah, he had a penchant for working with a variety of visionary directors who understood his approach and were eager to enlist the subtle talents of the consummate character actor. With supporting roles in In the Heat of the Night (1967), The Hired Hand (1971), Badlands (1973), 1941 (1979), and Stripes (1981), Oates delivered solid performances for filmmakers as diverse and talented as Norman Jewison, Peter Fonda, Terrence Malick, Steven Spielberg, and Ivan Reitman. Oates's offscreen personality was just as complex as his on-screen persona. Notorious for being a nightlife reveler, he was as sensitive and introspective as he was outgoing and prone to periods of exuberant, and at times illegal, excess. Though he never became a marquee name, Warren Oates continues to influence actors like Billy Bob Thornton and Benicio Del Toro, as well as directors such as Quentin Tarantino and Richard Linklater, all of whom have cited Oates as a major inspiration. In Warren Oates: A Wild Life, author Susan Compo skillfully captures the story of Oates's eventful life, indulgent lifestyle, and influential career.

Warren Oates: A Wild Life (Screen Classics)

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

University Press of Kentucky

California: The Rough Guide, Third Edition

Travel

Jensen, Jamie

Bosley, Deborah

Sinclair, Mick

Hutera, Donald

Rough Guides

Booklist called Susan Compo smart, sassy, and tough,” while Publishers Weekly praised her witty, unflinching prose.” Following two highly regarded story collections, Susan Compo’s first novel takes a sharp-eyed look at LA's culture industry. Giselle Entwistle has her hands full with her roster of demanding show-business clients. There’s Adon, struggling to make the transition from teen idol to mature star with the aid of a goatee. There’s would-be rock impresario Hedda Hophead, aggressive as junk mail and just as relentless.” There’s country singer Len Tingle, whose career has as many ups and downs as his love affair with Giselle; and Tupperware demonstrator extraordinaire Troy Harder, a living legend in food storage,” who Giselle fears might want to plastic-wrap her. Not to mention child prodigy belter Frances Culligan, who seems to have disappeared. And then there’s Pandra, whose haunting memoir of growing up in suburban Orange County and coming of age in '70s glitter-era Los Angeles (platform boots, Rodney’s English Disco, The Real Don Steele Show, David Bowie clones) forms a book within this book. Giselle hopes to get Pandra’s story published, but it does bring up this little matter of a possible murder in Pandra’s past . . .

Pretty Things

Contemporary

Verse Chorus Press

'Before there was Star Wars ... before there was Close Encounters ... there was The Man Who Fell To Earth.' - advertising tag line for 1981 reissue of the film.
Earthbound is the first book-length exploration of a true classic of twentieth-century science-fiction cinema, shot under the heavy, ethereal skies of New Mexico by the legendary British director Nicolas Roeg and starring David Bowie in a role he seemed born for as an extraterrestrial named Thomas Newton who comes to Earth in search of water. Based on a novel by the highly regarded American writer Walter Tevis, this dreamy, distressing, and visionary film resonates even more strongly in the twenty-first century than it did on its original release during the year of the US Bicentennial.
Drawing on extensive research and exclusive first-hand interviews with members of the cast and crew, Earthbound begins with a look at Tevis's 1963 novel before moving into a detailed analysis of a film described by its director as 'a sci-fi film without a lot of sci-fi tools' and starring a group of actors - Bowie, Buck Henry, Candy Clark, Rip Torn - later described by one of them (Henry) as 'not a cast but a dinner party.' It also seeks to uncover the mysteries surrounding Bowie's rejected soundtrack to the film (elements of which later ended up his groundbreaking 1977 album Low) and closes with a look at his return to the themes and characters of The Man Who Fell To Earth in one of his final works, the acclaimed musical production Lazarus.

Earthbound: David Bowie and The Man Who Fell To Earth

Humor & Entertainment

Jawbone Press

Life After Death is a deep dive into the subcultures of Los Angeles and London in the 1980s as glam turned to punk and goth. Susan Compo captures the lives of aspiring musicians, scenesters, and obsessive fans-lives in which reality is a constant threat to cherished illusions, and death, while never far away, is sometimes not the end of the story.

Literary

The Visible Spectrum

Malingering: Goth Stories

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Books by Compo, Susan