Seldon Rodman The Artist Nobody Knows, New World Writing, The New American Library: NY, 1952. Pages 151-157, 1952, 1921, 1918, 1898
"The heart of Los Angeles, contrary to popular belief, lies somewhere between San Pedro and Main on Fifth Street . . .
. . . in an anonymity as pervasive as that surrounding any of its denizens, lives the most dedicated artist in America, building, as a bee its honeycomb, one of the strangest and most abstractly beautiful structures in the world, out of junk.
"Watts . . . where Simon Radilla staked out his pie-shaped claim to immortality thirty-one years ago, lies in the no-man's-land of deteriorating bungalows that stretches interminably through the featureless flats between Pasadena, the upper-middle-class Nirvana, and Long Beach, the end of the road from Iowa which has been called a cemetery with lights.
"Crossing the tracks, the towers loom suddenly.
II
"Simon, who also calls himself Sam, wanted it that way. He wanted the towers to be seen. A hill would have been better but the hills of Los Angeles had already been spoken for. At least by these tracks the towers would be visible from the trains. But who rides in trains any more, least of all through downtown Los Angeles? And for that matter who visits the heart of Los Angeles for any purpose, or believes it to have heart? . . .
" . . . For all the obscurity in which they have grown, his will to communicate, to make their beauty available to everyone, is as strong today as it ever was . . . His dislike for the metropolis, one of the stimulants of his tireless energy, dates from 1921 when he applied to the city fathers for a building permit and was derisively turned down. The fact that the state government in Sacramento, whither he journeyed instantly to appeal the decision, overruled Los Angeles, and that by some miracle of perception and generosity (which may be a fantasy in itself) has now promised to refund everything he has paid in the last thirty years, makes him more than ever certain he builds for time to come. Lacking a charter of recognition from the United Nations or from Washington, he might will his creation to the state, but to the city, never.
"Simon was born in Italy in 1898. He immigrated to the United States nine years later, Discharged from the Army Engineers in 1918 after service in France, he resolved to begin work on his contribution to peace at once. "Why so many people want to shed blood?" he asks. "You go boxing match. It's when nose is broken and blood flow over boxer's eyes that people clap for joy. That's why, my dear friend, I not turn on this radio my niece she give me." Simon prefers to play ancient Martinelli and Caruso records on the horn-phonograph that is the only piece of furniture besides the bed in his one-room shack behind the towers."
" . . . "