Book excerpt: In his richly perceptive essay, Corboz takes to task previous European analyses of the American city which, he suggests, are little more than reflections of their own old-world bad faith. Using post-modern Los Angeles--the L.A. of contemporary cultural theorists Frederic Jameson and Mike Davis--as the terrain upon which his argument advances, he makes the case for a new city without a center yet united by what he sees as a typically American gregarious individualism.