Raiding the Icebox

Peter Wollen was Chair of the Department of Film, Television and New Media at the University of California, Los Angeles. His other books include Paris/Hollywood: Writings on Film and Paris/Manhattan: Writings on Art.

“To engage with Raiding the Icebox is exhilarating. Wolllen’s lightly carried erudition seems to belong to an earlier epoch, before the professionalization of the intellectual led to the construction of a dismaying language of criticism, notable for its ugly opacity. Throughout, Raiding the Icebox is a Pandora’s box of cultural subversion, filled with an astonishingly wide range of histories of art and artists.”—Elizabeth Wilson, New Left Review
Praise for the first edition
"Klein clearly follows in (Mike) Davis's wake, but develops a distinctive focus on
the erasure of memory in and about the city." Times Literary Supplement
"Klein is a fine stylist, an engaging historian. His account of the way noir shaped
the city is strikingly fresh." New Scientist
"1997's most important publication from the brilliant new wave of urban
theorists revolutionizing the study of L.A." LA Weekly