Los Angeles is often stereotyped as a place where people go to fulfill their dreams, a place that is filled with possibility. While true for some, only a fraction of people who go to Los Angeles get what they want, while so many try to claw their way into something that resembles contentment. Los Angeles can be a place where black is white, up is down, and the good get trounced by the bad. This side of the city is often presented in noir fiction and its derivatives, such as Michael Connelly’s The Concrete Blonde and Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim. The Los Angeles depicted in these two novels can described either as a pit filled with scrambling people trying gain some type of status or as a place where those with status come to shape the world, creating a sense of complete abandon or one of enjoyment and creativity. For Connelly, it can mean that a policeman who is sworn to protect the innocent world from the monsters can fall into the abyss they arise from. For Kadrey, an angel created to serve the will of God can become as twisted as any demon. While the stories of these of novels exist on different spectrums, their depiction of Los Angeles acts as their unifier, bringing together a cohesive image of what the city truly represents.
The Concrete Blonde follows Detective Harry Bosch as he stands trial for allegedly killing a man that he had suspected of being a serial killer, all while trying to find a copycat killer. As Bosch travels throughout the city, he comes to conclude that Los Angeles is
a city of shaken confidence, living solely on its stores of hope. In [his] mind [he] saw the polarization of the haves and have-nots as a scene in which a ferry was leaving the dock. An overloaded ferry leaving an overloaded dock, with some people with a foot on the boat and a foot on the dock. The boat was pulling further away and it would only be so long before those in the middle would fall in. Meanwhile, the ferry was still too crowded and would capsize at the first wave. Those left on the dock would certainly cheer this. They prayed for the wave. (Connelly, 302)
Bosch’s thoughts on the city serve as a glimpse into the fragile structure that keeps Los Angeles’ social structure running like clockwork. It is an ever-churning machine that processes people for the potential benefit of others. Considering Bosch’s mental boat, the people from the dock are trying to get onto the boat before it leaves. If they have to push people into the water in order to make sure they make it, it will be done. These people can be equated to the people with wealth and power. While these wealthy, powerful people clamber towards perceived safety, everyone else is either trying to ride their coattails or had the chance to board pushed away from them. These types of pushes occur because society, especially those established by racist patriarchies, inherently want people of status to keep pushing toward whatever the new perceived challenge is, no matter who or what is impacted on the journey there.
Bosch’s view presents that a possibility exists for those of lower position to climb up the social structure, showing that there is some flexibility to it. Ultimately, his view proves to be quite cynical as Bosch’s belief that the pier could capsize demonstrates that these positions are tenuous at best, due to humanity’s inherent desire to see others with greater power fall and die. While Bosch sees a fragile, potentially pointless struggle among those that populate Los Angeles, the characters of Sandman Slim have to deal with a much more literal struggle with the demons that populate Los Angeles.
Sandman Slim is a supernatural tale of revenge, following James Stark upon his return to the human realm after surviving eleven years in Hell itself. He escapes Hell in order to find the people who murdered the love of his life while he resided in Hell. These people also happen to be the same people who sent him to Hell in the first place. Stark’s search takes him across the City of Angels, much like Bosch, albeit with more magic and explosions. Stark’s views on Los Angeles reflect a sense that the city’s social structure is much more rigid than someone like Bosch considers it to be. While at a trendy club, in the process of stealing some relevant documents that would help him in his revenge, Stark comes across the city’s upper echelon, partaking in all sorts of debauchery. Stark states that
[the] incestuous, blackslapping, heavy-money-part cabal scene is everything [he hates] about L.A. in particular and human beings in general.
Those pricks down the hall, flying high above it all on this hillside, they’re the kind of people whose faces end up on money or a new library so that kids will have a new place to hang out while realizing that no one ever taught them how to read. Their wealth doesn’t insulate them from the world. It creates it. Their bank statements read like Genesis. Let there be light and let a thousand investment banks bloom. They shit cancer, and when they belch in a bowl valley like L.A., the air turns so thick and poisonous that you can cut it up like bread and serve it for lunch at McDonald’s. A Suicide Sandwich Happy Meal. (Kadrey, 165).
While Bosch views Los Angeles as akin to a scramble to a hilltop, Stark sees the city as under the direction of the wealthy. Their status allows them to craft the shape of the world as they see fit; their money allows their ideas to happen. People are nothing more to them than game board pieces to be moved around until their true purpose is clear. It doesn’t matter whether or not their plans are for good or ill intent; these kinds of people believe themselves to be so incredibly clever that they will convince everyone below them that whatever they are presenting is good and needs to be obtained, demonstrated by the allusion to McDonald’s. Fast food is generally horrible for the body, but society is so inured to it at this point that the negatives of it don’t matter anymore; it’s perceived as necessary and therefore is good. While this view of Stark’s is limited by the upper class of Los Angeles, he is able to have a genuine appreciation of the city, much more than Bosch is able to have.
Bosch’s view is defined by his ability to only see the darkness of the world, the cruelty of it all. This is shown during a conversation with his girlfriend, Sylvia, a high school teacher, over an idea brought up by one of her students about the city. She goes on to say that
[The Student] wrote, “West foreshadowed the end of Los Angeles’s halcyon moment. He saw the city of angels becoming a city of despair, a place where hopes get crushed under the weight of the mad crowd. His book was the warning!”
She looked up.
“She goes on but that was the part I wanted to read. She’s only a tenth-grader taking advance classes but she seemed to grasp something so strong there.”
He admired her lack of cynicism. Bosch’s first thought was that the kid had plagiarized—where’d she get a word like halcyon? But Sylvia saw past that. She saw the beauty in things. He saw the darkness. (Connelly, 187).
Bosch’s thoughts on the student’s writings are further proof of the idea that people are simply scrambling over one another, more often for nefarious motives. Upon hearing the passage, his first thought was that the student stole it from someone else. He doesn’t consider the possibility that she came up with the idea herself. To Bosch, that kind of originality is impossible in Los Angeles, possibly due to his only seeing the darkness in things. His work as a cop has made it so that Bosch cannot believe in the potential good in the world. While Bosch only sees the darkness around him, Stark takes the darkness of L.A. and makes a positive twist on the entire city.
While Los Angeles is presented as a relatively terrible place is consistent in both novels, Stark’s view is a vast departure in comparison to Bosch. Stark finds that all of the seediness that defines L.A. is what makes it such a great place. Towards the novel’s end, Stark states
There’s only one problem with L.A.
It exists.
L.A. is what happens when a bunch of Lovecraftian elder gods and porn starlets spend a weekend locked up in the Chateau Marmont snorting lines of crank off Jim Morrison’s bones. If the Viagra and illegal Traci Lords videos don’t get you going, then the Japanese tentacle porn will.
…L.A. is all assholes and angels, bloodsuckers and trustfund satanists, black magic and movie moguls with more bodies buried under the house than John Wayne Gacy.
There are more surveillance cameras and razor wire here than around the pope. L.A. is one traffic jam from going completely Hiroshima.
God, I love this town. (Kadrey, 371)
Stark realizes that Los Angeles is a place filled with the most seedy and terrible things that humanity has created to give themselves the most pleasure and enjoyment possible. But that’s what makes the city so appealing to Stark. He sees all the craziness that populates the City of Angels and says “Doesn’t that look cool? Let’s go look at all that and see what happens.” The madness of the city represents fun to Stark, something that he just can’t resist. This can also speak to humanity’s endless creativity. People will find anything and everything to do in the name of entertainment, regardless of the consequences. It is this sense of reckless joy that Stark enjoys and sees personified in the city of Los Angeles.
While The Concrete Blond and Sandman Slim both present Los Angeles as a place where people are always trying to dominate or conquer each other, they come to split, showing that the city is either a place of fun creativity or one of darkness and evil powered by selfish needs. Harry Bosch sees the city as a scramble between people trying to outdo one another, all while the others around them are waiting for them to crumble and fall back down. He only is able to see the darkness in others, not even considering that people are capable of doing good, only partaking in actions that damage others and elevate themselves. James Stark sees L.A., and by association the world, as being under the grip of the wealthy. These people use their status and wealth to shape the world; nothing happens unless it comes from their minds and is supported by their money. Unlike Bosch, Stark doesn’t see the darkness of the city as a problem. In fact, the darkness and weird sensibilities of the city are what make things interesting, which is what makes L.A. such a fascinating location for much fiction. Some might say it’s an astute observation about humanity itself, that it is a good thing that humanity strives to find something to give itself meaning. It is an observation we might need most in this chaotic world, albeit within reason. “Hey look at that thing? Doesn’t that look cool? Let’s go do something with it and see what happens”
Comments