Los Angeles' literary landscape

[Paul Mackin]

On May 2, 2006, at 11:53 PM, David Casseres wrote:

> I think LA by night from the air is one of the most beautiful sights
> in today's world.  A friend of mine used to seduce girls by flying out
> of Santa Monica airport in a lightplane, making a straight-out
> departure over the Pacific.  After gaining enough altitude, he would
> tell the young woman to close her eyes, then he'd make a 180 to face
> the lights of the city and tell her to open them.  Scored every time
> is what I heard.
>
> But yeah, I know about the BoschHell vision as well. Once I flew into
> LA on an airliner, passing low over a large and hellish forest fire in
> the Santa Monica Mountains.  A passenger freaked out and demanded to
> be allowed to leave the plane.  Back in that innocent age, the flight
> attendants talked him down, as opposed to trying to immobilize or kill
> him.


The view from the big HOLLYWOOD sign is quite impressive also.

L.A. is a veritable Rorschach test.  You can make of it what you will.


>
> On 5/2/06, Humberto Torofuerte <strongbool at gmail.com> wrote:
>> There is nothing to match flying over Los Angeles by night...only
>> Hieronymous Bosch's Hell can match the inferno effect.
>>
>>
>> On 5/1/06, David Casseres < david.casseres at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > 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.
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>