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Princess said in September 23rd, 2012 at 6:08 pm

That’s a good question. Mayo’s book, as you may know, has bcemoe extremely influential. Most people researching Los Angeles history begin with him and never examine earlier accounts.Digging into even a few pages of his treatment of the Marion Parker case was illuminating: He made numerous mistakes so many that it would be a life’s work to go through the entire book. Frankly, the facts were so mangled in a few pages that at this point I wouldn’t trust anything in it. George Morrow Mayo was an interesting character, but unfortunately, little is known about him. He was a pillar of the H.L. Mencken school, but although he wrote with a sharp edge, he lacked the more careful insight of Louis Adamic, another Mencken disciple. Where Mayo is merely shrill, Adamic is equally caustic, but illuminating. Mayo certainly had his critics, notably W.W. Robinson, who argued strongly against his version of the Owens Valley story, which I have stashed somewhere in the archives. (Robinson, one of my favorite L.A. writers, also faulted Carey McWilliams, but that’s another saga).

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