VLVL2 (10) Your average suburban mom, 194

[Paul Mackin]

Paul Nightingale wrote:

>(194.13-15) "... a Spanish split-level up a pleasant cul-de-sac on the
>high-rent side of Ventura Boulevard, with pepper trees and jacarandas in the
>yard and a vintage T-Bird in the carport."
>
>Am I right to assume that Ventura Boulevard covers a wide social spectrum,
>ie both rich and poor, commercial and residential? If so, the passage ("the
>high-rent side") reminds us that rich and poor don't inhabit different
>worlds. How much social mobility has Ditzah enjoyed?
>


I never spent any great amount of time in that section of my home town 
but Ventura Blvd is a natural divide. It's U.S. 101 to Santa Barbara and 
skirts the Santa Monica Mountains to the South. On the North are the 
old, fairly plain communites of the San Fernando Valley. To the hilly 
South the construction is newer. The mountainous areas of Los Angeles 
are usually seen as more desirable and tend to have the upscale houses. 
Winding streets, cul-de-sacs, etc. The Blvd. itself I don't think is 
socially differentialed on the basis of which side you're on. Very 
commercial--offices, stores, restaurants, apartment houses.

P.

>
>(194.22-23) "Pretending to be film editors," she told Prairie, "but we were
>really anarchist bombers."
>
>Cf the subsequent description (197) of their performance, followed by the
>"movie camera as weapon" passage. Ditzah's irony is self-deprecating, of
>course.
>
>(194.23-27) "This evening she looked like your average suburban mom, though
>what did Prairie know, maybe it was another disguise. Ditzah was drinking
>sangria and wearing eyeglasses with fashion frames and a muumuu with parrots
>all over it."
>
>Prairie has been inserted into the lifestyle of a respectable middle-aged
>and middle-class citizen, the first to appear in the novel thus far; her
>speculations are based on access to privileged knowledge about Ditzah's
>past.
>
>Cf the introduction to Frenesi, anything but affluent, "in an apartment in
>the older, downtown section of a pale humid Sun Belt city" (68).
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