IF WE WERE having class this week, I would have pointed your attention to a dust up that's occurring in real time out here in the journo-world. The New York Times has been publishing a series of pieces by Verilyn Klinkenborg about Los Angeles, many of which haven't been sitting well with us "laid back" folks. It's not so much what he is saying in these delicately appointed pieces about L.A. -- it's what he isn't saying, and the tone. There's always the tone.
Last Sunday, the Times published an editorial "Haunting Los Angeles" in which Klinkenborg explains that he is at a loss to understand Los Angeles' essenece: "The iconic glimpses don't help me in my quest -- not the sudden view of the Hollywood sign I get from the Hollywood Freeway, not the view of downtown almost floating in the sunset from Pasadena. Every now and then, I turn a corner and think that something essential is about to be revealed. The feeling intensifies all the way up Venice Boulvard into Culver City, and then I'm on National taking one of those curious hidden freeway entrances and suddenly the feeling vanishes"
Vanishes.
Klinkenborg, for all of his hesitation in his impossible quest for Los Angeles' essence concludes:
"If I had an extra lifetime to live, I'd live it here. I don't mean one lifetime lived, in the usual way. I mean a lifetime living within a block or two of the insurance shop on Venice Boulevard with the wrap-around neon facade. Another watching cars turn off National onto the 10 . . . . Perhaps then I could grasp what always escapes me here. Then I'd know whether it was worth looking for in the first place."
It's the final line that has created the dust up -- "worth looking for in the first place..." that has set off bells and has become an impetus for posts, tweets and columns this week (see Hector Tobar's piece in this week's L.A. Times.)
What it all said to me was exactly what we've been trying to move toward in this class. Many of you know the essence already and can articulate your corner, your street, the intersections, the essence -- without qualification or apology.
Go forward.
You know what you're looking for. And it doesn't escape you. It's in you.
-- L.G.
(photo credit: Robert Adams, courtesy the Getty website)
i do believe there's a pile of money buried beneath those palms in that picture. spencer tracy told me so.
ReplyDeleteand once again, a new yorker doesn't get LA, and somehow that's news (c.f. my previous comments about a.o. scott's take on "chinatown.") if the united states is an experiment in democracy, LA is an experiment in building a metropolis from scratch. klinkenborg writes as a person who is used to cities that were built around some other purpose: a shipping port, a military stronghold, industry. los angeles was built out of the concept of destination, a place to go to, an escape from other cities. the early builders of los angeles didn't hope to recreate the cities they came from, they arrived looking for and building off a clean slate. is it any surprise the results are a place that isn't anything like new york, the prototypical american city of the 19th century that refuses to change?
and i think, to see LA proper, one must literally skew one's vision. see it slant. most american cities built up while LA built out. that may not sound revelatory, but the landscape defines the city and if your mind is attuned to the vertical, the horizontal city seems flat in all respects.
LA is like a fingerprint. from a distance and to the untrained eye the patterns seem random or go unnoticed. but up close, the attuned can read the unique story in each ridge and jagged edge that is the city's genetic blueprint.
LA is no longer my home – i think we parted ways amiably – but it was once a place i called mine. and until you can make the city yours it is impossible to truly know it.
/my 2 cents.