Weekend Guide: 06.11.2021
The battle of Los Angeles
I always misspell Los Angeles. I mistake the last e for an a. Los Angelas. The Angelas. For as long as I can remember - The Angelas. I’ve got the yips. It’s a glitch in my matrix. I am not an LA guy.
My first trip to the West Coast came at 13 years old. Start down south. LA. Drive up north. SF. Along the rocky meandering PCH. On paper it sounds great. I vaguely remember a night in a small hotel room with my entire family in Pismo Beach. Tired from a long day of fighting and throwing up from motion sickness — we turned in for a restless night of no sleep. But we had escaped LA. That felt good.
Running the day back, behind my eyelids. Cemented in gridlock. The ocean was cold. The intimidating coast line looked ancient but new - like the rest of its hulking mass had just been chipped off with an ice pick. But I liked it more than the city on the beach. The Angelas.
California. Los Angeles. This was another planet.
I have been back to Los Angelas a few times as an adult. The city has repeatedly failed to leave a positive impression on me. Or maybe it is me who has failed it. I likely had no idea where to go or what to do. I was probably doing it all wrong. I was left on empty.
When I think of Los Angeles now, I think of the 1992’s The Player by Robert Altman. If you are not familiar, skip the books this week and check this one out. It’s sort of an anti-LA, LA movie. A black comedy if you will. Certified classic!
It nails my general feeling on the place, the idea, and the reality.
Antipathy
Despite my cultural aversion to the city of Los Angeles. I recently I found myself in the weeds with some very LA novels. Body High by Jon Lindsay (2021) and The Road to Los Angeles by John Fante (1936). Both books are pretty gross. The former surely influenced the latter.
Both novels follow a pretty scummy type of Los Angeles guy as they navigate the seedy underbelly of the city. Both struggling writers. Both delusional. Both just kind of sucky people who do bad things to others. Body High and The Road to Los Angelas affirmed my distaste for the cultural exports of the city. I say this with peace and love.
*I do love the nod to Vintage Contemporaries*
Los Angeles works as a setting. It looks good. Glitz. Glamour. Hollywood. Etc. But the juxtaposition of the beach and the grime of a forgotten downtown - definitely sets it apart, and welcomes all weirdo plots with open arms.
Most notably this sort of setting works for noir, neo noir, and crime/detective type stuff. Now this is a lane your boy likes to swim in!
A few years back I set aside my distaste of the City of Angels to read In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes. I still think about this book all the time. I thought about it this week as I painstakingly worked through these other LA novels. I unfairly pitted them against an undefeated champion.
Hughes perfected the lost and slighted loner navigating the seedy LA underbelly in 1947. It’s methodical. Restrained. Dark as absolute fuck, and truly evil. Five starts. Would read again. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
When I one day write out a list of my favorite all time books. This will be on it. The aforementioned LA novels will not. This is The Angelas I’ll keep coming back for.
Thanks for going on this ride with me. I want to once again thank everyone who purchased Sometime During Eternity. You are a patron of the arts! I love you and I cannot wait to hear what you think.