The Curator: reading through an LA fever dream
quotes from my favorite LA novels to get you through this heat wave, plus a new all-time favorite movie and a lot about Rachel Cusk.
It is going to be a hot one.
Like the sweatiest summer on record. The history of mankind is but a blip on the radar of the sun, and yet here she is, making us lose our damn minds.
What's a gal (or guy or pal) to do?
Stay the frack inside. Read a book.
Because it's hot, it's the start of summer, and I’ve been reading East of Eden for 300 years, I’ve been in this sort of California fever dream feeling. I walk around with a knot of nostalgia in my belly, even for time periods I’ve only experienced in books or movies, hoping that the glaring asphalt and overexposed strip malls are just a terrible mirage.
But they aren’t, and sometimes the only way to get through it is with my favorite stories about Los Angeles from “The Simpler Times.” And by simpler, I just mean when there was less traffic and no internet.
But why LA? I don’t even technically live there. Perhaps it’s the sprawling layout, the terrain ranging from beach to desert to mountain, or the persistent sunshine, but something about LA just makes me want to drive and drive and end up back at the same place I started. It's the perfect labyrinth of memory and future. A way to find yourself by first losing it. Simply, LA has lessons to teach us. Also, there is no end of content to mine - people LOVE to write about LA.
Lessons about LA I’ve learned from some of my favorite books
It can be a gorgeously mystical place to live
The apartment was in Santa Monica on Third Street, just a few blocks from the ocean, in a tumbling hillside alive with butterflies and cats… All three rooms looked straight out into a horizon of blue, gray, green Pacific with sunsets blazing orange in summer and glowing pink in winter… For the first six months, all she wanted was honest labor, finely crafted novels, and surf. She was clean again, for the ocean salt water was purifying and good for washing away the ravages of depravity. - Eve Babitz, Sex and Rage
Or a degenerate one
Their front windows were masked by hedges and shrubs. Sodden trees dripped all over the landscape… It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in. - Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep.
It can light on fire at any moment
This is dry land. A tinderbox. Blessed and cursed with a breeze. The local Santa Ana winds speed through the mountains and valleys from the inland to the shore, hot and strong. Myth says they are agents of chaos and disorder. But what they really are is an accelerant. A tiny spark in the dry desert wood can grow to a blaze and run wild, burning bright orange and red. It devours the land.. But that land is young once again, ready to grow something new. - Taylor Jenkins Reid, Malibu Rising
And it will drive you mad
The images I had were of people being driven mad by living in the city. Images of parents who were so hungry and unfulfilled that they ate their own children. Images of people, teenagers my own age, looking up from the asphalt and being blinded by the sun. - Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero.
But elsewhere is worse
This is a story about love and death in the golden land, and begins with the country. The San Bernardino Valley lies only an hour east of Los Angeles by the San Bernardino Freeway but is in certain ways an alien place… There has been no rain since April. Every voice seems a scream. It is the season of suicide and divorce and prickly dread, wherever the wind blows. - Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
Unless it’s Orange County
Specifically, Laguna Beach, California. The brightest pearl in the SoCal necklace of coastal towns that stretches down that lovely neck from Newport Beach to Mexico... known for its beaches and its beauty. - Don Winslow, The Kings of Cool.
Thanks for taking this lil *road trip* with me. Do you have any favorite books set in LA to add to this list?
READING 📖→
Once again, East of Eden. I am on page 525 of 600. I will finish tonight and I will have LOTS to say (!!!).
Just started Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay - the early reviews from Bookstagram aren’t as nice as the “Summer must-read lists” that include it, so we will see.
I finally made it to Karin Slaughter’s Will Trent series on audio and I couldn’t be happier. We are back with my girl Kathleen Early in Undone and ohhhh how I missed her subtle southern twang. Part of my love for Trent is the setup - I find the police procedural a better framework for her stories than the chief of police/coroner wife combo.
WATCHING 📽️→
Alien. The 1979 original featuring Sigourney Weaver’s tighty whities blew us away. The movie looks like it could have been made today. My theory is the simplicity of the technical design and the lighting/shadows. They made IRL monsters (no CGI) and kept the ship and its buttons simple, plus the lighting darkly noir so that it ages beautifully. A masterpiece for all time.
BOOKS IN MY SHOPPING CART 🛒→
Parade by Rachel Cusk - I now own the entire Outline trilogy and haven’t read a single one but Cusk is an icon and I plan to get on it. This one is about an artist who paints everything upside down and the legacy her children must face when she dies. Weird but ok!
Same as it Ever Was by Claire Lombardo - you know I love a messy family drama, especially when it’s called “the literary love child of Jonathan Franzen and Anne Tyler”.
Wild Houses by Colin Barrett - I also love Irish messy family dramas, if you didn’t know. It’s a story of “two outsiders striving to find themselves as their worlds collapse in chaos and violence.”
BOOK NEWS & RESTACKS 📰→
Speaking of Cusk.
wrote an excellent piece on the Cusk theory of cover design, which says as much about Cusk book contents as it does about modern book branding.Keep it going Cusk! A very intriguing review of Parade.
Every week, The New Yorker adds to The Best Books We’ve Read in 2024 list, and it’s a great place to mine your next read. Wild Houses is on my radar thanks to this list.
AND CATS 🐈⬛→
Throwback to the one lost but never forgotten. RIP Peanut.
LET’S CHAT 👻→
Do you have favorite book(s) set in a certain city?
What are you reading currently, and is it any good?
Does the weather where you are at also make you want to never leave the house?
In Case You Missed It 🖤
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See you around the bookshelf!
Natalie
I'm a San Francisco native but I still have such a soft spot for a LA book! Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra was one of my favorite books of 2022, if you like Hollywood stories.
I love books with strong settings, and LA sounds like a great one for some summer reading. Thanks for sharing such good quotes!