Los Angeles' literary landscape

[David Casseres]

The view of San Narciso from a hilltop, looking just like a
printed-circuit board, is one of the things that made me bond tightly
to Pynchon's books.  It is truly a breathtaking insight about
California, and remains as precisely true today as it was then.

On 5/1/06, Dave Monroe <monropolitan at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The Crying of Lot 49
>
> By Thomas Pynchon
>
> When Oedipa Maas first beholds San Narcisco, a vast
> sprawl of houses somewhere near L.A., it is all
> dystopia sheathed in smog — and ripe for a conspiracy
> as dark as any Jacobean tragedy But what matters most
> is that Pynchon in a little more than 100 pages
> captures a topography straight out of our local past.
> The high jinks at Yoyodyne, the cavorting at Echo
> Courts, and the pink glow of the sky at night — we
> fail to recognize this world at our own risk.