Los Angeles Noir 2

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Los Angeles is a young city. As recently as the 1860s, it was still a dusty Spanish pueblo where the Zanjero who regulated the water flow from the L.A. River earned more than the mayor.

Unlike the eastern seaboard, whose world of arts and letters predates the American Revolution, Los Angeles literature bloomed late. But our scant history and tradition freed us up to create new myths. We made it up as we went along.

Visiting writers were both intrigued and appalled. They praised the city’s golden light and stunning landscapes while damning its vulgarity, hedonism, and the surreal spectacle of Hollywood.

But love it or hate it, they came to toil in the Dream Factory.

Los Angeles was the most alluring femme fatale imaginable, dangling glittering wealth and reinvention. In return, all she wanted was a little wordsmithing. How difficult could it be?

And so they came—Cornell Woolrich, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Norman Mailer, James M. Cain, Chester Himes, Horace McCoy, Paul Cain, Dorothy Parker, and Ernest Hemingway. They were miserable, of course, punching studio clocks and having their work rewritten by less talented writers.

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