Medieval in LA

by Paul, Jim

"Life begins in chaos, each of us falling out of random chance, then getting the feeling that certainly we had to happen." So thinks the modern-day narrator of Medieval in LA, who accidentally inundates his white pants (and his copy of The Passion of the Western Mind) with tomato juice on a flight to Los Angeles. And thus begins an LA weekend, a series of ordinary events that puts us in the company of the extraordinary and the hilarious. Jim Paul's playful fiction takes the concept of travelogue where it's never been before, pulling off a surprising synthesis that merges the trip to LA, that most post- of modern cities, with a capsule history of Western thought. The more mundane the moment, the more illuminating. At a cafe on Beverly Boulevard on Yom Kippur a man wears cross-country skiing shoes, and from this sight our erudite guide leads us into a meditation on Leviticus ("nor go forth shod"), on the mercurial nature of fads and fashion, on the sacred and the profane. Shopping for a