Thanks for the queries.
In a real sense we're all losers, aren't we? Nobody
gets out of here alive. I think of Jack LIffey as someone
doing his best, sort of a Canute holding back the tide with a
fork. I think he said once we all have this glorious hope
that things will work out all right for us in the end, but
maybe they won't. And we have to accept that, too, and keep
rolling the rock up the hill, like Sisyphus--one of my
favorite essays, by the way, the Camus.
I don't really find LA unlivable, but it has more than
its share of oddities and disasters (I had to hustle two
kitties away in a fire evacuation this year). I've tried to
sprinkle some of that surreal quality through the books. LA
is where people come to remake themselves, famously, and
there is something of bad faith about that act that redounds
on the whole city. It's too easy to carricature the place as
all celebrity-mad. I'm more interested in the Nathanael West
type folks, people who feel out of place and do the best with
what they've got. I suppose that's just the modern
condition.
There's more musing along this line at my website, if
anyone is interested, especially under Q&A and LA
Lore--which is a long set of answers I gave to my French
translator to explain things about LA and America.
_www.jackliffey.com_
(http://www.jackliffey.com)
**************Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in
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