Fwd: Fang

[Charles Albert]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Charles Albert <cfalbert at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 9:52 PM
Subject: Re: Fang
To: Richard Fiero <rfiero at gmail.com>



I suspect that this may also have inspired some of the elements of Nathaniel
West's Cool Million.....

love,
cfa



On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 11:34 PM, Richard Fiero <rfiero at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> This may have been inspired by Herbert Asbury's "Barbary Coast" (1933
> Garden City Publishing) which is essential reading for AtD if one doesn't
> know that a "deadfall" is an establishment where drinking and gambling take
> place.
> "Barbary Coast" about San Francisco's Chinatown 1875-1910, pg 166: "Many of
> the places where opium was smoked, or was supposed to be smoked, were fakes,
> tourist-shockers conducted by the professional guides to the quarter, who
> were licensed by the city and were organized as the Chinatown Guides
> Association.  These abodes of synthetic sin were invariably in dank and
> dreary cellars, dangerous underground passages.  In many of these dimly
> lighted ways evil-looking Chinamen, in the employ of the guides, slunk back
> and forth, carrying knives and hatchets and providing atmosphere and local
> color. . . . This fancy persisted until the district was destroyed in 1906
> [earthquake].  While it lay in ruins, the whole area was carefully explored
> and mapped. Not a single underground passage was discovered, and few cellars
> larger or deeper than are commonly found under dwellings and business
> houses."
>
>
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