Joel Murphy

 Contemporary Literature of LA

Despite the agony of his leg, he was able to think clearly about his picture, “The Burning of Los Angeles.”  After his quarrel with Faye, he had worked on it continually to escape tormenting himself, and the way to it in his mind had become almost automatic…. He could see all the rough charcoal strokes with which he had blocked it out on the big canvas.  Across the top, parallel with the frame, he had drawn the burning city, a great bonfire of architectural styles, ranging from the Egyptian to Cape Cod colonial.  Through the center, winding from left to right, was a long hill street and down it, spilling into the middle foreground, came the mob carrying baseball bats and torches.  For the faces of its members, he was using the innumerable sketches he had made of the people who come to California to die; the cultists of all sorts, economic as well as religious, the wave, airplane, funeral and preview watchers—all those poor devils who can only be stirred by the promise of miracle sand then only to violence.  A super “Dr. Know-All Pierce-All” had made the necessary promise and they were marching behind his banner in a great unified front of screwballs and screwboxes to purify the land.  No longer bored, they sang and danced joyously in the red light of the flames.

---Nathanael West The Day of the Locust, page 184

And so we have one of the best descriptions of what Los Angeles was and quite prophetically would become.  Homer watches as his huge mural-like painting which he entitled The Conflagration of Los Angeles itself burn on the theater.  Meanwhile he gets caught up in mob of angry Angelinos, just as he had depicted in his painting.  Moreover, there is a leader to the group, who claims he knows how the purify LA.  The bored citizens like the fire.  Even though homer’s painting is unfinished, it shows the burning city and all the disgruntled citizens who are actually happy to be part of the conflagration.

So is West’s description the 1933 origins of LA Noir or just farcical novella largely ignored for decades?  How could West have had such insight into LA art and society in the 1930s?  Could it be that Los Angeles has not changed much in eighty years?

This paper is loosely picking up Kevin Hall’s research on LA writers and the movie industry.  He wrote about Fitzgerald and West and realized he had to narrow his scope and so did not include Faulkner or others.  Hall also did not have time to consider contemporary LA novelists.  I will try to focus on this group, if there is a known group.

We know Fante is no longer in the mix, even though his novel of LA was made into a movie, Ask the Dust.  So where do we go from here?

Walter Mosley is the obvious choice.  His Easy Rawlins’ novels are still quite popular, even with Bill Clinton.  He has continued the noir culture of Philip Marlowe.  We should discuss Devil in a Blue Dress….  Mosley has also written a book on writing, in which he claims writers need to get in touch with their unconscious and write outside of social conventions where we have to act normal and avoid deviance (WalterMosley.com).  He has also written a book about civil disobedience called Life out of Context.  Here he discusses how to bring about social change by sit-ins around the Capitol.

While I missed his talk at Claremont, where I believe he was promoted his book about writing, his return to LA from NYC is significant.  My point?  He does not live or work in LA.  He may have been born here, but is not what I would call a LA resident.  He may have learned to write LA noir but he is not an LA writer.

Peter Moore Smith has recently published his novel Los Angeles (2005).  It is also LA noir.  His descriptions of Los Angeles seem very accurate.  He describes the smog, the workingclass people, and all the beat up cars. 

The narrator is Angel, who is a screenwriter.  He is also an albino and so does not normally go outside during the day.  Thus  the noir genre connection.  He spends most of his time playing Blade Runner on his DVD player.  Then his girlfriend, Angela, disappears and he must venture out to try to find her. 

The reader can easily make the connections with the names Los Angeles, Angel and Angela.  The real problem, like with Mosley, is that Moore Smith lives in New York.  He is not a resident of Los Angeles, so he cannot be called an LA writer.  So our search continues to “LAwritersgroup.com.”  This is a website, but presumably with offices in LA.  Readers will read your work and give you constructive feedback.  The group specializes in innovative writer exercises to improve your writing (LAwritersgroup.com).

One problem is that there is a waiting list to join and the group seems more interested in promoting its new group in New York City.  So what’s wrong with LA, I keep asking myself.

The fact that these new writers are compiling anthologies is interesting, but one fact is reinforced again.  LA writers are transient.  Once the Mosleys and the Didions find work or projects elsewhere, they leave.  The writers might take LA noir with them, but they don’t stay to live in LA.

            I decided to interview a writer who had lived in Pasadena and Arcadia for ten years.  This writer, Ray Murphy, has two novels published by small presses.  I asked him if it is not true that while LA is huge, it has few known writers.  His response was that “LA has become its own third world country and no one has time for trivialities such as writing fiction.”  But he didn’t think the lack of writers was unique.  “think of Detroit or Cleveland…  when’s the last time a good writer came out of those major cities?”  One of his friends from the UCLA film school was trying to write a screenplay from one of the writer’s novels but nothing has solidified yet. From this experience—novel into screenplay-- Murphy argued that the genre of the Los Angeles area is scriptwriting and screenplays.  LA writers are “all writing for the movies.  LA has no tradition except movies and no literary magazines.”  Furthermore, LA is not known for publishing houses, which may be one reason why so many writers live in New York City.  They are smart to live in or near the capital of the publishing world.  LA is left to the screenwriters, except perhaps for James Ellroy, stated Murphy.  According to Murphy, Ellroy writes shoddy published novels just to have the opportunity to turn them into screenplays (interview, April 21, 2007). 

            Ellroy grew up in El Monte, California.  His mother was a nurse but also an alcoholic.  When Ellroy was young, his mother was murdered.  The case was never solved and this fact affected Ellroy. In fact in 1987 when he wrote The Black Dahlia, he dedicated it to his mother.  In 1990 he wrote LA Confidential, which has also been made into a movie.  But, contrary to what Murphy said, Ellroy did not write the screenplays and in fact disapproved of some changes made to his novels.  Because of his successes, Ellroy is identified with LA more than any other writer since Raymond Chandler (James Ellroy, biography and works, 2-3).

            Ellroy claims that for him, obsession has been a good thing, and such is his obsession with LA crime and the police.  Ellroy claims he “wants to celebrate” the crimes of crazy white American men (1-2).

One problem that has again arisen is that Booksfactory.com claims that Ellroy lives in Kansas City and not LA anymore (2).  This would again point to the transient nature of LA writers:  yes, they like to write about LA but don’t want to live in LA.  Yet, in the case of Ellroy, I am not convinced he lives in Kansas City because people from LA don’t usually move to Kansas.  Also his personality strikes me as an unreliable narrator of his own life.  He claims to support the LAPD and is conservative in some respects (www.ellroy.com/biography.htm).  Consequently, I would not be surprised if he actually did still live in LA.

            He surveyed the lake of grass below, all the dandelions gone, a touch of rust in the trees, and the smell of Egypt blowing from the far east.

“Think I’ll go eat me a doughnut and take me a nap,” Doug said.

---Excerpt from Bradbury’s latest novel, Summer’s End

            It was Davis, quoting Mogen, who said that Bradbury “took on the angst of the dislocated Midwesterner in Los Angeles and projected it as extra-terrestrial destiny (Davis 42).  Except this quotation is misleading since I think Bradbury has enjoyed his surrealistic experiences in LA; I don’t see any angst in his writing; I see the new and tacky and the simplistic moralist. So what of Bradbury?   Although originally from Wisconsin, Bradbury has been a constancy in Los Angeles.  He claims to have met the Vaudeville people in early LA as well as WC Fields.

Bradbury strikes me as authorial foil to West.  The latter saw LA as a dystopia, while I believe Bradbury still thinks LA utopia is possible.  Bradbury is also still a believer in the positive use of science, although LA has probably not been a great display of science or the better of the improvement of life via technological advances.  Although we could argue with his transparent themes and moralism at times, we cannot argue with his longevity as a writer and as a resident of Los Angeles.  It apparently is a paradise, at least to Bradbury.  He remains the last of the LA writers, gargoyle though he is.

Edward Bunker is a true original of American letters.  His … books are criminal classics:  novels about criminals, written by an ex-criminal, from the unregenerately criminal viewpoint.

                   ----James Ellroy

            Although recently deceased, Edward bunker must be included in talk of literature in LA.  Ellroy’s life of petty teen crime pales in comparison to Bunker’s murder of an inmate in Folsom.  It took more than seventeen years and the sale of many pints of his own blood to pay postage before one of his novels was published.   Some critics say his No Beast So Fierce is the best crime novel ever written.  He also wrote Little Boy Blue and Dog Eat Dog.  His autobiography is Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade (Edward Bunker, No Exit Press).  One surprising critic, Wikipedia, claims his memoir is full of contradictions and distortions.  This site claims that Bunker saw that there were no jobs for parolees and therefore they do what they return to what they know:  crime (Edward Bunker, Wikipedia). 

            Bunker lived his whole life in California and served more than twenty years incarcerated.  He was a writer, minor actor, and screenwriter (Edward Bunker, No Exit Press).  Speaking of No Beast So Fierce, Ellroy wrote, “Quite simply, one of the great crime novels of the past 30 years; perhaps the best novel of the Los Angeles underworld ever written” (Edward Bunker, TW Books).

History and Philosophy

We cannot delve into LA literature and noir without considering some history of the basin and ultimately, the philosophy behind the literature and history.

            Even from a populist, cable news kind of history, LA has not proven itself an utopia.  From the sixties forward, we have the Manson murders, the death of Marilyn Monroe, the murder of Robert Kennedy, the trial Sir Han Sir Han,and the mystery of the woman in the polka dot dress.  Then comes Nixon and Reagan, first on the California scene and later the national stage.  We have the Watts Riots.  We have Cesar Chavez and the grape boycott.  Later, the nineties, we have the OJ Trial, the Rodney King Trial, the LA Riots, and the Northridge Earthquake.  We have more urban sprawl—now all the way to Palm Springs; we have more freeways, which of course ironically means more traffic. With NAFTA we have more train, truck, and port traffic, which means more pollution and more smog.  What does it all equal?  Too much human activity in Los Angeles, too many human and natural disasters.

So what then are the ramifications for philosophy?  Probably Noir and Post Modernism. A website, Native Intelligence, discusses epigraphs as a way of understanding Los Angeles.  The first is written by Ellroy:  “LA is epidemically everywhere and discernible only in glimpses” (Native Intelligence 1).  By this I think Ellroy means many trends start in Los Angeles and the city is such a sprawl, but at the same time, we cannot see or understand the totality of all the basin.  So much of Los Angeles is ugly concrete, and yet there are many exceptions in the most unlikely places.  When I saw a trailer carrying real U.S. tanks next a huge pink Cadillac, I thought, “this is LA; this is what Ellroy is talking about.”

            Another epigraph that fits with our LA palimpsest is by Kate Braverman: 

It occurs to her that what she most appreciates about this City of the Angels is that which is missing, the voids, the unstitched borders, the empty corridors, the not yet deciphered.  She is grateful for the absence of history.

She uses the utopian name for the city, giving it a heavenly twist.  This, however, is followed by a twist in which there is emptiness and absence.  We have often spoken of the fact that, other than Davis’ book, there is no comprehensive history of the LA basin, and even Davis’ gloss is filled with voids and incompletes.  Right now the project is unbound, but the future holds hope of reexamining the history of LA.  From our lectures, it appears that many academics, especially younger ones, are studying and reinterpreting what has happened or is happening in the basin.  The work will probably still be a palimpsest but let’s hope some of the voids can be filled. 

            One last epigraph is in order, which is from Christopher Isherwood’s Diaries:

Perhaps there are more haunted houses in Los Angeles than in any other city in the world.  They are haunted by the fears of their former owners.  They smell of divorce, broken contracts, studio politics, bad debts, false friendship, adultery, extravagance, whiskey and lies.  Every closet hides the poor little ghost of a stillborn reputation. “Go away,” it whispers, “go back where you came from. There is no home here. I was vain and greedy. They flattered me. I failed. You will fail. Go away” (Native Intelligence 2).

According to the website epigraph collector, this quotation demonstrates the great challenges but also fascination that LA offers writers.  We need to get beneath the glitter and silicon to study the essence.  The city is a siren, attractive and dangerous but that is one way to understand LA Noir (2).

            Native Intelligence is a site created by the editor of  the collection, Los Angeles Noir, a short story anthology published by Akashic Books.   So just like LA, everything doubles as an advertisement.  One solution to the advertisement is, of course, to create our own palimpsest.  In this course we spoke of writing a history of LA, how about a work of fiction that goes beyond Noir and crime literature? A brief proposal follows.

So one obvious problem is that there are few known writers who live and work in the basin and write about issues in it.  So if none exists, it is necessary to create one. What is one solution?  Without “artistic fascism,” create some parameters for a LA writers project.  Claremont, with its trees and PhDs, can be the seat of part of the project.  The real thrust of the project, however, would represent the local communities of Los Angeles.  Since Los Angeles is like Spain (in one respect anyway) in that people from Spain while living in Spain do not say they are Spanish, but name their local community.  Likewise in Los Angeles.  Someone from Long Beach says he is from Long Beach.  Someone from Pomona says she is from there.  So how could the project be guided and who would be the main characters?

Creative Writing:  Angeleno Palimpsest by Angeleno Palimpsest:  Devil in the Dystopia

First, we must make use of the four elements.  A sometimes very contemporary city like LA cannot be understood except by the primitive, like water, air, earth, and fire.

Water—first there was drought then floods then a concrete riverbed followed by canals… water from salty stagnate lakes and canyons.

Earth—first there was land, followed by tract homes, then there were suburbs, and then gated communities.

Air—first there was air and then wind and fog.  Then there was smoke from human activity.  Last there was eternal smog, but not the peasouper type from London but the dry, thick, red-brown like rusty chainsaws in the sky.

            Next, a word about the characters:  they must mostly by ethnic characters since LA County is mostly as such.  We must get into the mind of the ethnic characters because they are the present and future of LA.  Their Interior Monologues will be an important part of the work.  A description of the characters and some monologues follow.

An Asian-American is writing a dissertation on the history of Los Angeles and the internment camps of WWII, all the while trying to fend off his relatives and their job offers.  Mean time, he has become fascinated with the postings on Wikipedia, and is falling in love with a “chola”( a Mexican-American girl from the underclass).

Flurry is a former LAPD cop who accepted early retirement; he is now a cab driver but a PI at night.  He had suspicions against Chief Bates on many fronts and was called to the scene with Senator McKnight was killed at the El Senador Hotel downtown.

Next is Joaquin Gallegos, who is writing the Great Mexican-American Novel, from his smoggy garage in Pomona.  He is supposed to be working as a labor organizer but ends up spending most of his time trying to communicate with his grandma, who thinks Franco is still after her and trying to find his girlfriend, Amalia, on the dance floor.

Moses White is African-American movie director, who spends most of his time looking for his 18 year old daughter, and is quickly going broke filming “Othello on Central Ave.”

There is also Ali Ali who runs a car dealership in Orange County.  While he is constantly under surveillance, he is one of the few honest people in the basin and has other things on his mind….

Next is an out of work assassin, who is of undetermined sex and writes a cryptic Noir column for the Daily Mirage.

Last is the Reader, who spends all time—day and night—monitoring phone, email, google searches, television, radio, snail mail, freeway travel of the residents of the LA Basin.

Interior Monologue:

I sit here drinking coffee, rubbing my moustache because assassins can do that; they are private people and live alone, quietly in small, whitewashed rooms with large windows to peer out of—secretly of course.  Assassins have time between jobs and don’t qualify for unemployment.  “Half now and half later after the hit.”  We hide bits on money everywhere, from the toilet to the bandage box.  We wait and leer out from behind thin yellow curtains blowing in the stale cool air.

Well, I am not really just a Reader.  I am a listener too.  I hear your cell phone conversations from the Valley to San Bernidodo.  I can even read your google searches and monitor the soaps you watch at home.  I am not Big Brother; I merely secure the homeland from one of the most subversive areas of the world, where foreigners run free and speak in tongues.

How the hell do I get to Bel Air from my digs in Claremont?  Take the 10 all the way to the 405 and then take which exit?? Or should I take the 10 to the 101 and then take Santa Monica Blvd?  Actually this time of day I think I should take the 210 to the 101 south and come in from behind. This city makes no sense, everything’s backwards. No, there’s a sig alert at the 101 and 405 interchange; forget it; I’ll go at midnight… and look for the woman in the yellow polka dot dress.

                                                 Works Cited

Bradbury, Ray. Farewell Summer.http://www.raybradbury.com/books/farewell_summer.html

Davis, Mike. City of Quartz. New York: Verso, 1990.

Edward Bunker. No Exit Press. http://www.noexit.co.uk/bunker.htm

Edward Bunker. TW Books. http://www.twbooks.co.uk/authors/edwardbunker.html

Edward Bunker. Wikipedia. http://www.wikipedia/edwardbunker.html>

Hamilton, Denise. LA Noir Epigraphs. Native Intelligence. http://www.laobserved.com/intell/2007/04/la_noir_epigraphs.php

Hartlaub, Joe. Los Angeles by Peter Moore Smith: a book review. Book Reporter. <http://www.bookreporter.com/reviews>

LA Writers Group. <http://www.lawritersgroup.com>

Mosley, Walter. http://www.waltermosley.com

Murphy, Ray. Writers in Los Angeles. Interview:  April 21, 2007.

O’Connor, Anne-Marie. “New Read on L.A.” LA Times online. http://www.woodsontheweb.com

West, Nathanael. The Day of the Locust. New York: New Directions, 1933.