I get heartbroken flying into L.A. It's just this feeling of unspecific loss. Can you imagine what the San Fernando Valley was when it was all wheat fields? Can you imagine what John Steinbeck saw?
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Los Angeles was an impression of failure, of disappointment, of despair, and of oddly makeshift lives. This is California? I thought.
There was a period of time in Los Angeles when I wondered if I was just going to lose everything.
It's a shame about California, and particularly about L.A., where they've demolished so many landmarks. It's a bit of a disease there, where if anything is over 30 years old, they sort of knock it down and replace it. It's a strange town, it's this sprawling suburb, and then there's a city, the old town.
I don't see a lot of nature in L.A. Then again, I don't see a lot when I go back to St. Louis, either.
Drawing the desperate and the adrift, Los Angeles has long been the dumping ground of dreams both real and cinematic.
When I first went to L.A., I really hated it. I had this preconceived idea of what it would be like. You think of Hollywood as this beautiful place, but everything looks rundown and old.
When someone hears that I've written a book about 1897, I'm usually met with blank stares. And the first thing they say is, 'Was there even an L.A. back then?' A lot of people don't even think there was a city before the movies appeared. That concept of Los Angeles is so strong in the popular imagination that celebrity overrides everything.
Los Angeles survives on that which is unpredictable. The unexpected courses through its very veins.
The spirit of L.A. is untamed wilderness. It's earthquakes and wildfires and oceans and mountain lions and fog. There's great physical beauty.
We went to L.A. as a family, with a sort of vision that we were going to 'make it,' whatever that meant.
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