Dazzling in its diversity, sprawling across more than 1, 000 square miles, Los Angeles is not unlike the elephant of the fable that puzzled the blind men . How can one possdibly define a place that gave the world Mickey Mouse and Marilyn Monroe, the Watts riots and the Mansion murders, not to mention the kosher enchilada? Los Angeles is a metropolis of 85 cities with no "center of gravity", as Peter Theroux writes in one of the witty, observant little essays that make up Translating LA (Norton; 271 pages; $21). Its user- unfriendly downtown center resembles Gertrude Stein's famous description...
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