Los Angeles is not a city that produces novels. It produces pressure. It produces atmosphere. At face value, its promise is that it will always go on to produce pleasure, leisure, and entertainment forever. Which seems to be less true, all the time, as entertainment gives way to critique.
I don’t hold with those who fret we are losing the film industry, although it will continue to transmogrify itself to NYC and elsewhere. The monster shoving fistfuls of popcorn wants to gaze at itself reflected on screen, trying to get a clear view of its own monstrousness as it digests, burps, farts, and gasps—falls in love, etc.
L.A. always produces conditions under which narrative becomes destabilized and meaning becomes suspect—this is its magic trick, lifting the curtain and seeing how pliable meaning has always been. It’s a hall of mirrors set against hills periodically on fire. For decades, the rest of the country treated Los Angeles as some kind of immense aberration—a moral experiment gone wrong. A too flexible world of smart people messing with reality.