the prophet sings her own praises

Kate Braverman took pains in this week's LA Times profile to send home the message that Los Angeles is not giving her the respect she deserves. While Palm Latitudes is a compelling and lyrical novel and her other books also have their own merits, you've gotta have a weighty set of cojones to declare yourself as having "the most literary stature, certainly, of any woman in Southern California" or that other writers in Los Angeles "wouldn't exist" without you. Braverman's other over-the-top claims are worth clicking through for, and they echo her bashing of the city in the San Francisco Chronicle, in which she describes herself as "a splendid mutation ... a female intellectual in a region that did not recognize this as a possibility." At least in her Bookslut interview, she only refers to herself alongside Didion and Bukowski as a "holy trinity."
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