Fiction
Los Angeles has provided fertile territory for writers of fiction with crime fiction being a common genre for stories about the city. During the twentieth century, fiction portraying the city has highlighted the complexity of the city and the discontinuities between its public image and the reality of living there. The size and scale of the city have also provided crime writers with a suitably complex city against which to set their stories. Works that explore life in the city include:
- James Robert Baker, "Fuel-Injected Dreams", 1986; "Boy Wonder", 1988
- Raymond Chandler,The Big Sleep, 1939
- Raymond Chandler,Farewell My Lovely, 1940
- Raymond Chandler,The Long Goodbye, 1953
- Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero, 1985
- James Ellroy, Black Dahlia, 1987
- James Ellroy, LA Confidential, 1990
- James Ellroy, White Jazz, 1992
- John Fante, Ask the Dust, 1939
- Roger L. Simon, The Moses Wine series, starting with The Big Fix, 1973
- Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One, 1947.
- Nathaniel West, Day of the Locust, 1939.
- Michael Connelly, Harry Bosch Series, starting with The Black Echo, 1992–present
- Gerald Jay Goldberg, Heart Payments, 1982.
- Gerald Jay Goldberg, 126 Days of Continuous Sunshine, 1972.
- Charles Bukowski, Post Office, 1971.
- Nina Revoyr, Southland, 2003.
- Hector Tobar, The Barbarian Nurseries, 2011.
- Mary Helen Ponce, Hoyt Street: A Autobiography, 2006.
Read more about this topic: Arts And Culture Of Los Angeles, Literature
Famous quotes containing the word fiction:
“To value the tradition of, and the discipline required for, the craft of fiction seems today pointless. The real Arcadia is a lonely, mountainous plateau, overbouldered and strewn with the skulls of sheep slain for vellum and old bitten pinions that tried to be quills. It’s forty rough miles by mule from Athens, a city where there’s a fair, a movie house, cotton candy.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)
“A predilection for genre fiction is symptomatic of a kind of arrested development.”
—Thomas M. Disch (b. 1940)
“The obvious parallels between Star Wars and The Wizard of Oz have frequently been noted: in both there is the orphan hero who is raised on a farm by an aunt and uncle and yearns to escape to adventure. Obi-wan Kenobi resembles the Wizard; the loyal, plucky little robot R2D2 is Toto; C3PO is the Tin Man; and Chewbacca is the Cowardly Lion. Darth Vader replaces the Wicked Witch: this is a patriarchy rather than a matriarchy.”
—Andrew Gordon, U.S. educator, critic. “The Inescapable Family in American Science Fiction and Fantasy Films,” Journal of Popular Film and Television (Summer 1992)