Imagining Los Angeles: A City in Fiction

Imagining Los Angeles: A City in Fiction (2000)
By David Fine

Synopsis: This book asks how LA, as a place, shaped the imaginations of novelists who wrote about it. Fine does this by surveying the various genres of L.A.-based fiction, ranging from early booster imagery and myth-making of the 1880s-1920s, hard-boiled 1930s, tough guy detective stories, the Hollywood novel, "down and out in LA," Black Dahlia and Zoot Suits, and apocalyptic lit. It's not very argument-driven, and seems that the bottom line is that L.A. has always been both a utopia and a dystopia. It has long been seen as a land of new beginnings and of opportunities, thus also seen ironically when these new beginnings turn out to be false. Interestingly, much of L.A. lit is by migrants, and not by those who have long been entrenched in the culture, which is what regionalist lit is usually like. L.A. is shown as a timeless and placeless "liminal zone" filled with odd architecture that embodies no dominant style. For a place so obsessed with the future, L.A. always seems to be recreating the past.

Interacts With:

City of Quartz, Golden State, Golden Youth, The City in Literature