But the real soon roused me from reveries—I must get back. I was alone, far from camp—grizzlies might come out as the moon came up.
WILLIAM H. BREWER
1928
Just walk down Hollywood Boulevard someday—if you must have something out of uniform. Here are little fairies who can quote Rimbaud before they are 18.
HART CRANE
1934
Came to live at the Garden of Allah, Villa 23.
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
1960
From the moment I arrived in America, everyone told me that Los Angeles was horrible, that I would really like SFrancisco but would hate LA, so I had convinced myself that I would definitely like it. And indeed I arrive and am immediately enthusiastic: yes, this is the American city, the impossible city, it’s so enormous, and since I only enjoy being in huge cities it is just right for me. It is as long as if the area between Milan and Turin were just one single city stretching north as far as Como and south as far as Vercelli. But the beauty of it is that in between, between one district and the next (they’re actually called cities and often they are nothing but endless stretches of villas, big and small), there are huge, totally deserted mountains which you have to cross to go from one part of the city to another, populated by deer and mountain lions or pumas, and on the sea there are peninsulas and beaches that are among the most beautiful in the world….
“Here anyone going on foot will be arrested immediately” was what we jokingly said on arrival in Los Angeles, where there are no pedestrians. In fact, one day I try to go by foot for a stretch through Culver City, and after a few blocks a policeman on a motorbike comes alongside and stops me. I had crossed a street—one that was narrow and deserted, what’s more—while the light was at red. In order to avoid the fine—“the ticket”—I explain that I am a foreigner, etc., that I am an absent-minded professor, etc., but he has no sense of humor, makes a lot of fuss and asks a lot of questions because I do not have my passport with me (in America I have noticed—even before this—that documents are totally pointless); he does not give me a ticket, but he keeps me there for a quarter of an hour. A pedestrian is always a suspicious character.
ITALO CALVINO
FEBRUARY 21
1776
We set out from the mission of San Gabriel at half past eleven in the morning….The land was very green and flower-strewn. The road has some hills and many mires caused by the rains, and for this reason the pack train fell very far behind. At the camp site there is permanent water, though little, and plenty of firewood. On the left at a distance runs the chain of hills which form the Bay of San Pedro.
FATHER PEDRO FONT
1943
Wish you could have seen us playing the Internationale to him in [Samuel Goldwyn’s] office—(He said: It’s a “steering” tune.)
You deserve some kind of medal—but I’d rather wait till I can pin it on myself…
P.S. Just heard the Strav. Symphony on the air.
AARON COPLAND, to Leonard Bernstein
FEBRUARY 22
1882
Yesterday noon I gave a seven-course dinner at the Cosmopolitan Hotel….
I was at the train to see them off, and there met Mr. Perry and returned with him to call on his daughter. She gave me some violets from her first concert in America last Saturday night, and her picture, and showed me some beautiful jewels which she had purchased in Europe. Mr. Powers left in low spirits, as Velma did not encourage his suit. I went out with Mrs. Voorhees this evening to see a fire.
L. VERNON BRIGGS
1934
Went to Palm Springs with Florence.
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS, decamping with his mistress
1935
STRAVINSKI!…The evening was pure joy.
This is now music which we have and which is accepted, which does not provoke anger or hysteria or any vulgar objection.
JOHN CAGE
FEBRUARY 23
1854
Dined at Roland’s, thence home to wife and baby. An Indian girl who used to wash for us came in and sauntered through the garden. After looking round everywhere, she seemed to think there was very little useful in it, asking me, “Why, señor, do you not sow calabazas and zandías?” What a question for the heart of a florist! In self-defence I appealed to my chiceros (peas) but she replied, “There are so few of them!”
JUDGE BENJAMIN HAYES
1874
Benjamin Hayes, formerly district judge at Los Angeles, later a resident of San Diego, and for twenty-five years an enthusiastic collector and preserver of historic data, not only placed me in possession of all his collection, but gave me his heart with it, and continued to interest himself in my work as if it were his own, and to add to his collection while in my possession as if it was still in his….It was the 23d of February that this important purchase was consummated….
It was a hard day’s work, beginning at seven o’clock, and during which we did not stop to eat, to catalogue and pack the collection. Taking up one after another of his companion-creations, fondly the little old man handled them; affectionately he told their history. Every paper, every page, was to him a hundred memories of a hundred breathing realities. These were not to him dead facts; they were, indeed, his life.
HUBERT HOWE BANCROFT
1965
Where would I come in? Just before Bunin, Ivan, The Gentleman from San Francisco? No? Well. Or Bulosan, Carlos? America Is in the Heart.
America is in the balls. America is in the factories. America is in the streets, hustling shines and newspapers, climbing down through skylights to the mother-blossom of the safes. I am the toilet paper wiped against America.
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
1976
The only chopped-liver known hereabouts is what these cigar-colored retired bank presidents contract from drinking too much bourbon….The octogenarian waitresses in the dining room are ringing their cowbell to indicate that unless I get in there pronto (it’s now 6:18 p.m.) I will get no chopped carrot-and-raisin salad….I will have to draw to a close on this melancholy vignette of a man ready to sell his soul for a whiff of a potato lotkeh.
S. J. PERELMAN
FEBRUARY 24
1935
The stores of Los Angeles put on a dollar sale and they played to more money than the races did, and Iowa had a picnic the same day out here and they had more people than the races and the dollar sale combined….With all these going on in one town, I wouldn’t worry too much about the country going Bolsheviki.
WILL ROGERS
1959
This blacklist will not be broken by the triumph of morality over immorality. It will not be broken by the triumph of one organization over another organization. It will only be broken by the sheer excellence of the work of two or three blacklisted writers. Call it talent, call it competence, ability, craftsmanship, or what you will—still in all, that is the only practical weapon for the job. I think we have that weapon, and that within the next few months, or the next year, we shall have to use it. Which is to say that each of us individually, acting in coordination with each other, must very soon use the excellence of our work to compel the use of our names.
DALTON TRUMBO, to a fellow blacklistee
FEBRUARY 25
1853
Frequent rumors reach our city from San Gorgonio, that the Indians are deprived of the use of the water, by Mr. Weaver, and that in consequence they are unable to sow their grain. We hope the rumors may not prove true; for the acts complained of are outrages which may provoke retaliation. The law expressly provides that the Indians shall retain uninterrupted possession of lands they may have occupied for a series of years. Moreover, these Indians are Juan Antonio’s Cahuillas, with whom Gen. Bean formed a treaty, pledging the faith of the State that they should not be molested so long as they observed its terms. Th
us, to deprive them of any of their former privileges would be a violation of both the law and the treaty, and may lead to serious difficulties.
BENJAMIN DAVIS “DON BENITO” WILSON
1942
Last night, nothing occurred, and morning came. Secretary of Navy Knox announced that an enemy plane flying over Los Angeles was an error. On the other hand, the Department of the Army is saying an enemy reconnaissance plane definitely came. Both departments are publicly engaged in an absurd argument….
It seems the anti-aircraft rounds fired the night before were produced in the 1930s, and one third failed to explode. In the English-language newspaper, there were photos of these useless duds where they had come down on roads and people’s yards.
AOKI HISA
FEBRUARY 27
1926
Have you a little Colt in your home? I have three—a Government Model 45 automatic that I packed for years on Tarzana Ranch and with which I missed every coyote in the Santa Monica mountains at least once until finally The Colonel became so peeved that he bucked me off on top of a mountain and left me to walk home—and another old and rusty six-gun that Bull might have toted in The Bandit of Hell’s Bend. It bears the serial number 70495. Once, being broke and jobless, I annexed a temporary job as railway policeman in Salt Lake City. It was then that 70495 assisted me materially in running boes [hoboes] off the U.P. passenger trains.
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
1939
Los Angeles seems familiar, perhaps because Prince Michael Dimitri Alexandrovitch Obolensky Romanoff is jailed and publicized on the day of my arrival. Prince Mike, who is an agreeable, harmless fellow, is always getting into jail. He was in jail in Wichita when I first met him, about 18 years ago. I have gone to the Tombs in New York to greet him, and if I have time I shall hunt him up in the Los Angeles holdover….He has so many friends that stone walls do not a prison make for him….
In the coffee shop of the Ambassador I have breakfast with Dale Carnegie and his nephew, Pierre, who is attending school here, but lives in Kansas City. Dale and I have offices only a few blocks apart in Manhattan and have been friends for years. But we have to come to California to eat together and have a half hour’s chat.
CHARLES B. DRISCOLL
FEBRUARY 28
1848
If the Mexicans do not improve very shortly in their War department [Scott] will occupy all the small as well as the principal towns; it will be as well, for really it is time their race is annihilated to make room for better.
HENRY DALTON
1852
We left San Pedro after breakfast and reached Los Angeles between two and three o’clock; we would have got there much sooner, but it rained the night before. The road is very good and passes through a beautiful prairie which is covered with clover and flowers. You cannot guess who was our driver—Pete Middleton, of Liberty. He has been here six years, has a Spanish wife and is bootblacker and barber for the town.
The site of Los Angeles is lovely, but the city is very ugly. Most of the houses are built of mud, some are plastered outside, and have a porch around them, looking neat and pretty as any house, but these are few and far between. We are surrounded almost by high green hills. Remove this and place here one of the pretty towns in the States, and I do not think there could be a more lovely spot.
MRS. EMILY HAYES, wife of Judge Benjamin Hayes
1938
At outs with the Schick and preparing to renounce it for the old fashioned lawnmower method. We go down town, where all is wet, and most of the day a fine drizzle is promoting. I do librarying, getting out Aubrey Drury’s California: An Intimate Guide for the fifth time because no matter how sick it makes me I consider it my duty to read it. To Mays for dinner and evening, and now the drizzle has turned to a downpour. When we leave, crossing Chevy Chase is like one of our hinterland river crossings.
CHARIS WILSON
1947
It’s marvelous: you can see the whole of Los Angeles in the distance, and the sea, and there are big eucalyptus trees and horses and hens—it’s countryside and town at the same time. On the table there’s an immense basket of oranges and orange-blossom that some unknown admirer sent me….
I’ve had three fantastic days here. [A mutual friend] has taken me gallivanting about everywhere: to the seaside; to the cemetery, which is extraordinary; into the hills; to Pasadena, etc. I gave lectures at Los Angeles on Tuesday and at Pasadena on Wednesday….The first evening they took me to the Mexican quarter, which is very, very agreeable, and we ate in a restaurant so pretty it would have reduced the Kosakiewitch sisters to tears. The band, the cabaret, the cuisine and the drinks were all Mexican. Afterwards we went to a very pretty nightclub, with good jazz. On the second day we went to a kind of Los Angeles Montparnasse, at the bottom of a canyon beside the sea. There was a French café of the artistic kind with French cuisine, also very agreeable. We made a trip to Venice, to the Luna Park…and went on the most terrifying “scenic railway” of my life…
Yesterday was cinema day. In the morning I went to the hairdressers and visited the village of Westwood, near where we’re living—it’s close to Beverly Hills. The village itself is very pretty. We went and picked up [Ivan] Moffat at the studio. [George] Stevens invited us to lunch at Lucey’s….
Afterwards, a sumptuous Chinese dinner in the smartest restaurant in Los Angeles—truly the most beautiful setting I’ve ever been in—a kind of aquarium or Haitian conservatory with the most marvelously pretty and astonishing lights and decor. The consul was host. I drank a monstrous zombie and ate delicious things….
Moffat took us to the very top of a hill from which you can see all Los Angeles at your feet. An immensity of twinkling lights in silence. It was very mild, and we stayed for quite a while smoking cigarettes and gazing. We were very happy. We went to bed at 2 in the morning….
Goodbye, my love….I’d like to live in America with you for a good long while. I live with you all the time, and kiss you with all my might.
Your charming Beaver
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR, to Jean-Paul Sartre
FEBRUARY 29
1848
Left Los Angeles for Santa Barbara I was ordered by Col Mason on a courtmartial—left on Saturday morning with 18 horses and reached there on Sunday night a distance of 120 mile—staid one week at Santa B—was three days getting back—slept in the woods all night, wolves howling all around me could not sleep, hunted about in the dark for water, found a mud puddle at last drank heartily—had nothing to eat—
LIEUTENANT JOHN MCHENRY HOLLINGSWORTH
1968
There is a growing feeling of urgency. Be assured that there is no false or artificial deadline we face….reworking some more original work if we don’t quite build up enough money. We have decided that we must get the tooth filled and the [gap-toothed Mad magazine icon Alfred E.] Newman look wiped out before I go. But I’ll forgo the $100 Newman bit if necessary.
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER
1968
A nice expression I just learnt: as queer as a tree full of ducks. (Good titles for trilogy: A Tree Full of Ducks, Dick’s Hatband, The Three-Dollar Bill.)
Monday morning was foggy. I woke and immediately knew that, for some extraordinary reason, I wanted to reread The Prisoner of Zenda. So I did, right through, and most of Rupert of Hentzau too. They are a very good demonstration of the supreme importance of narrative viewpoint. Zenda is far superior to Hentzau chiefly because it is so much more fun to be with Rassendyll than von Tarlenheim….
Cabaret opened in London yesterday and Robin French has heard from Hugh that the notices are very good. The Daily Mail tracked down Jean [Ross] as the original of Sally Bowles and she has been interviewed and is being brought to the theater to meet Judi Dench.
CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD
MARCH 1
1934
I’m beginning to realize that it’s as important to inoculate myself against my family as it is for hay-fever victims to stay away from goldenrod and mimosa….God, if I could swing it, I know I could make a good piece of work.
M.F.K. FISHER
1949
I bought Point Counter Point today and read steadily for six hours to finish it. Huxley’s prose is so deliciously assured—his observations so gloriously acute, if one glories in the deft exposing of our civilization’s emptiness—I found the book very exciting, though—a tribute to my embryonic critical abilities.
SUSAN SONTAG
Dear Los Angeles Page 7
