British-born architectural critic/historian Reyner Banham [1922-88] is perhaps the greatest interpreter of the city of Los Angeles -- how it happened and what makes it tick. His writings about the place, and especially his short film Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles [1972] deconstruct the city as no one else has done before or since.

I love L.A. almost as much as Banham, and find it an incredible garden of earthly delights with a rich, unexpected array of resources. It's also completely out of control and over the top. I visited in simpler times -- 1976, 1982 and 1985 and not since. It's not everybody's cup of tea. [Mike Davis's book, City of Quartz offers a useful perspective of modern-day L.A. as it has developed in the years after Banham's passing.]

In the early 1930s quite a few show business actors, producers, writers and crewpersons relocated to Los Angeles from New York, as Hollywood became the headquarters for motion picture production. In the book Grocuho, Chico, Harpo and Sometimes Zeppo, a Marx Brothers bio by Joe Adamson, the author recounts a cross-country trip by S.J. Perelman and Will Johnstone, comedy sketch writers for the Marxes:

"Now we cut back to Hollywood, where Perelman, thoroughly appalled all the way across the country by his prolific partner [Johnstone insisted on doing watercolors of every vista that came into view, besides getting three weeks of comic strips finished in three days, all with a hand shaken by a rocky roadbed and three crocks of illegal applejack], now stepped off the train to be appalled anew, by what he later described as a land of "Moorish confectionaries, viscid malted milks, avocado salads, frosted papayas, sneak previews... studio technicians, old ladies studying Bahaism, bit players, chippies, upraised voices extolling the virtues of various faith healers or laxatives... the city of dreadful day... Bridgeport with palms... a metropolis made up of innumerable Midwestern hamlets... an unalloyed horror... a hayseed's idea of the Big Apple... everything about that city's murders had the two-dimensional quality of American life... viewed in full sunlight, its tawdriness is unspeakable; in the torrential downpour of the rainy season, as we first saw it, it inspired anguish... After a few days I could have sworn that our faces began to take on the hue of Kodachromes, and even the dog, an animal used to bizarre surroundings, developed a strange, off-register look, as if he were badly printed in overlapping colors."

Perelman didn't get it. Banham did. In England and elsewhere Banham used to cut a sporting figure [tall man with a neat suit and bushy beard] riding a folding bicycle. He learned how to drive later in life when living in L.A. so he could understand the area better. In his 1971 book Los Angeles: the Architecture of Four Ecologies he breaks down the area's experience by geographical overlays, and in so doing deepens our understanding of its unique cross-cultural mashup and novel aspects.

Also really enjoyed his 1982 book Scenes in America Deserta. This one is out of print and hard to find, but worth it. Banham uses his investigative and analytical triangulation to cast a wider net over the wide open spaces of the American West.

There is also a 2003 biography of Banham called Reyner Banham: Historian of the Immediate Future, by Nigel Whiteley. It's a lengthy volume with lots of photos and graphics collected, and ultimately runs a little flat and isn't nearly as interesting as its subject.

Banham has the qualities I like the most in writers and documentary producers: an infectious enthusiasm and strong sense of humor and the absurd.

Two nights ago at the Anchorage Museum I was privileged to listen to a presentation by Eames Demetrios, and then meet and talk with him briefly afterwards. As the grandson of groundbreaking designers Charles and Ray Eames, and current head of the Eames Office, Demetrios acts as caretaker/historian and archivist, providing continuity and keeping their work and influence at the forefront, while administering ongoing projects.

The presentation was bound to be fascinating, and he didn't disappoint. He said that at the core of Charles and Ray's design philosophy was a welcoming accommodation of guests; and this binds together the various design disciplines, in all cultures of the world. That was a revelation, and exciting to contemplate for a number of reasons. One gets multiple opportunities in life to host guests [and then later, to be a guest] and it is amazing that so many have no idea how to do it. As a guest, those times when the host is gracious and engaged are golden. Those are the memories that are treasured forever. As a Designer, this realization tends to put the work effort in focus and context.

Charles and Ray launched a dizzying array of pursuits, many of which didn't seem to go together or have a logical progression from one to the next. Others working in the 1940s and '50s had a similar bent, and I see it in a few people working that way today but it is less common.

The trait I most appreciated about them is perseverance, and the stories and anecdotal evidence Demetrios presented really reinforced it. There were many prototypes that absolutely didn't work, and projects that were abandoned because they were ill-suited for one reason or another. In some cases it took years of experimentation to lead to a desirable/useful result. Rather than consider any of these dead ends as failures, requiring redress and restructuring to prevent the similar failures in the future, they celebrated them. Such commitment is the major ingredient to their success and ability to innovate over and over.

Demetrios repeated some of Charles and Ray's quotes I'd heard before ["We take our pleasures seriously"] and filled in some gaps about certain struggles they experienced. Most of all, they brought joy and humor to most of what they did. The Do Nothing Machine was nothing short of pure genius.

In the beginning, I knew of Eames because of their fiberglass shell chair, a mid-century modern classic. The armchair version particularly is astonishingly comfortable, while not looking like it would be. It was a critical and financial success for them. It is only a small part of their body of work. I wondered what Charles, who died in 1978 and Ray, who left this world ten years later would do with an iPhone. [Nothing that most of the rest of us could possibly dream up, no doubt.]