Holy Land : A Suburban Memoir

Rating:
Summary: Amazing & Important
Review: A very unique memoir of place. It makes the mudane seems holy and paints a stunning portrait of an oft-dimissed landscape. A must read.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: After reading an excerpt of "Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir" in "Writing Los Angeles," I looked forward to reading the entire work much praised by Joan Didion a writer that I admire.
Unfortunately, I was disappointed by "Holy Land's" lack of focus and sprawling, often times out of control prose.
The concept is remarkable: writing a biography of a city (Lakewood, California) and detailing it's construction, it's history, the financial and social history of it's founders and the personal history of Waldie and his family.
But it just doesn't work. What it lacks is a fire, an inner life, and the guts that pull all the disparate facts, foibles and attitudes together. As it is, it mostly just rambles from one subject to another without the unifying spark of passion.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: After reading an excerpt of "Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir" in "Writing Los Angeles," I looked forward to reading the entire work much praised by Joan Didion a writer that I admire.
Unfortunately, I was disappointed by "Holy Land's" lack of focus and sprawling, often times out of control prose.
The concept is remarkable: writing a biography of a city (Lakewood, California) and detailing it's construction, it's history, the financial and social history of it's founders and the personal history of Waldie and his family.
But it just doesn't work. What it lacks is a fire, an inner life, and the guts that pull all the disparate facts, foibles and attitudes together. As it is, it mostly just rambles from one subject to another without the unifying spark of passion.

Rating:
Summary: A reflective work about the neighborhoods that shape us.
Review: Holy Land is a work which reflects. Like a mirror, it reflects those of us who have grown up in suburbia. It shows how the planned community has shaped our lives and our identities. Who we are is largely defined by those who have laid out the grid work of our neighborhoods. It also reflects the historical accidents which brought suburbs into being. Would suburbs have been necessary without the Great Depression, World War II, the automobile or the dust bowl? It is emotionally reflective because the writing style and the content causes the reader to pause and reflect upon the neighborhood grids, and patterns which have shaped and defined the reader. It is spiritually reflective because the content forces the spiritual questions, "Is there anything more to life?" "Is life really nothing more than surviving in a landscape which is a grid designed by a developer who's primary purpose was to make a profit?" If the reader's answer is "no" then I suppose Holy Land is a depressing piece of non-fiction. It is also spiritually reflective because it illustrates how humans define space. Through human definition some space becomes sacred, other space becomes desirable and other space becomes functional. The reader is forced to reflect upon how the space in which their life is experienced is defined. In its very size and shape Holy Land is reflective of suburbia. A book that can be read before the 8:00 p.m. prime time begins. A book without strings attached. A book of poignant memories to which all veterans of suburbia can relate. This book however should not be read in a single sitting, although that would be very easy to do. I recommend that the reader read passages and then go for a walk or a drive through their neighborhood and reflect upon their own life and neighborhood. Then return back to the book and read some more If nothing else it will be a reflective experience.

Rating:
Summary: California Book Award winner
Review: Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir received the non-fiction prize in the 1997 California Book Awards, presented since 1933 by the Commonwealth Club of California.

Rating:
Summary: Truly well-written slice of American history
Review: I can't be nearly as eloquent as the other reviewers but I found this to be a truly powerful book. My WWII-generation parents bought their first house in Lakewood in 1952 and lived there for 15 years. I have always had a fascination with Lakewood, and as corny as it may seem, always felt a kind of spiritual connection to the place. While certainly an in-depth look at the history of "my city", Waldie just as expertly explores issues such as existence and mortality. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Rating:
Summary: The underbelly of the tract home industry
Review: I have thrust this book into the hands of every other person I know. I can't remember the last time I did that. Unless you grew up in a custom home in an exclusive old neighborhood, this book is about your life and you must not let this slim volume pass. In a spare, haunting style - in fact, no chapter is longer than a page - Mr. Waldie stuns and soothes the reader, all the while illuminating and explaining the sordid underbelly of the American homebuilding industry. Mr. Waldie grew up in the same tract neighborhood where he still lives in the same house his parents purchased nearly fifty years ago. Now, he is a city official in that same mass produced town, Lakewood, California. Mr. Waldie explicates the convoluted manner that the tract home builders entwine into local politics to squeeze out every dime from the raw land. Here are answers to questions which you never realized you had, but which you will never forget. With the artistry of a poet, Waldie makes the reader "see" the underground wonderworld of water into which Southern California sinks taproots to drain ancient riverbeds a half mile below the urban sprawl that is Los Angeles. This is a rare treat. I guarantee that you will be pressing this book into the hands of friends just so you can have someone to discuss it with.

Rating:
Summary: holy land: a suburban memoir
Review: I live in Signal Hill, right next to Lakewood. On Saturday mornings I like to get up early and get a 40 of Olde English and ride my old english 3 speed bicycle around the quiet streets of Lakewood while sipping my beer. There is an erie sense of peace and contentment that lives in this place. It's foggy usually at this time of year, and big crows caw and flap from street to street and wire to wire. big trees sit silently, there hardly ever seems to be any wind. I ride along sipping my beer, driving right up the middle of seemingly abandoned suburban streets, never bothered by cops as I would if I drove up the street drinking beer from a bottle at 8 in the morning over in Long Beach. Indeed, the only signs of life are the crows and the occaisional dog barking from behind a fence. Mr. Waldie has recreated this strange world perfectly in the pages of his book.

Rating:
Summary: holy land: a suburban memoir
Review: I live in Signal Hill, right next to Lakewood. On Saturday mornings I like to get up early and get a 40 of Olde English and ride my old english 3 speed bicycle around the quiet streets of Lakewood while sipping my beer. There is an erie sense of peace and contentment that lives in this place. It's foggy usually at this time of year, and big crows caw and flap from street to street and wire to wire. big trees sit silently, there hardly ever seems to be any wind. I ride along sipping my beer, driving right up the middle of seemingly abandoned suburban streets, never bothered by cops as I would if I drove up the street drinking beer from a bottle at 8 in the morning over in Long Beach. Indeed, the only signs of life are the crows and the occaisional dog barking from behind a fence. Mr. Waldie has recreated this strange world perfectly in the pages of his book.

Rating:
Summary: Great fro Teaching
Review: I taught this book as the last reading in an undergraduate course on Western suburban history. The students responded with tremendous enthusiasm. They recognized much that was familiar in Waldie's strange hometown (a strangeness common to suburbs all over the West). This book crystallized a feeling of loss for many students. Suburbs like Lakewood, or like the tract house developments going up today all over the region and nation, feel emptied of history for the children who grow up there. Their names (Lakewood?) like their green lawns are imposed, divorced from the land's human and natural history. Children feel this and they know something is missing. This book opened up the opportunity for students to express their own feelings and experiences of suburban life.

Note I also recommend you see the wonderful poetry of Kevin Hearle, _Each Thing We Know is Changed Because We Know It_ (1994)