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Imagining Los Angeles: Five Psychotopographies in the Fiction of Steve Erickson

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Imagining Los Angeles: Five Psychotopographies in the Fiction of Steve Erickson University College London PhD Architecture (Re)Imagining Los Angeles: Five Psychotopographies in the Fiction of Steve Erickson Rebecca Lynne Litchfield 1 I, Rebecca Lynne Litchfield, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that it has been indicated. 2 The thesis investigates psychotopography: the dynamic interrelationship of emotions, landscape, and the individual. Psychotopography suggests an all-encompassing connection between landscape and emotion and attempts to outline the intricacies of this, subsequently providing new ways of mapping the landscape, in particular, a re-mapping of emotional and psychic responses to the urban space. The aim of psychotopography is to create new understandings of ourselves, the ways in which we interact with the city, and the identities that arise as a result, through an exploration of the psychotopographic states and tendencies of a place, as identified in creative processes such as fiction, art and film. This study is done with particular reference to the landscape of Los Angeles and individuals relationship with it. Psychotopography is a term specifically used by Los-Angeles based American novelist Steve Erickson, and therefore the thesis approaches psychotopography principally through Erickson’s writings, using studies of five psychotopographic states identified in his work: emotion, happiness, numbers, liquidity and apocalypse. These five main chapters deal with themes that are significant not only in Erickson’s writings but as part of the experience of Los Angeles and the surrounding area, and the interrelation between these themes, their motifs and the notion of psychotopography. The psychotopography of Erickson’s novels and characters is intricately woven through all aspects of his writing and therefore the methodology used during the study of Erickson’s writing is close thematic analysis. This allows a highly detailed and deliberate exploration of both the mechanics and concepts within Erickson’s fiction. The thesis will develop the notion of psychotopography both within the novels and the wider context of the Los Angeles and Southern Californian landscape, going on to suggest how this notion might be applied to other disciplines and mediums. 3 Contents Acknowledgements 5 Introduction 6 Chapter 1. An introduction to the history and landscape of Southern California 23 Chapter 2. An introduction to the literature of Los Angeles 72 Chapter 3. An introduction to the fiction of Steve Erickson 104 Chapter 4. Emotion 123 Chapter 5. Happiness 146 Chapter 6. Numbers 167 Chapter 7. Liquidity 186 Chapter 8. Apocalypse. 204 Conclusion 223 Appendix A: Extended summaries of novels discussed 242 Appendix B: Erickson interview transcript 268 Bibliography 276 4 Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following people for their help and support throughout the writing of this thesis: The Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding the project, The Architectural Research Group for their funding contribution for the field trip to Los Angeles, Lynne Litchfield for generously giving up her time to editing and proof-reading, Prof Iain Borden for not only his supervision, but also all his support throughout my time at The Bartlett School of Architecture, all the friends who have spent years listening to me talking constantly about Steve Erickson, and finally, Nathan Lawrence, without whom I doubt I could have coped, thank you for everything. 5 Introduction Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles Frank Lloyd Wright Introduction In 2001, National Geographic announced the launch of a new series of literary travel books. The series would involve authors of both fiction and non-fiction visiting and then writing about a place of their choosing, the aim being to produce volumes of travel literature that explained and explored the places visited whilst retaining and reflecting the “strong personal voice”1 of the author. As anticipated the results yielded writing about the expected classics: London. Paris, Barcelona, Sicily. However, when American novelist A.M Holmes was approached, her choice was neither a great site of beauty nor a majestic city of old. It was Los Angeles. Despite initial “visions of a walking tour across France” or “dogsledding across Canada,” Holmes, “chose Los Angeles because it feels like one of the most American cities in America.”2 It was Thomas Jefferson, the third President who presented the American people with the notion that the pursuit of happiness should be part of their inalienable rights,3 who sent the expedition west to explore the American frontier, a move that eventually led to the settlement of what became the state of California. However, it wasn’t until more than a century later that Southern California – Los Angeles in particular – began to emerge as the site of the dynamic and creative future that Jefferson had envisaged.4 In 1900 Los Angeles became the “best advertised city in America”5 placing the city and its Mediterranean-style climate in the forefront of the American imagination. The city of Los Angeles was the first to be lit entirely by electric lights and in the following ten years an aqueduct was built to carry water into the arid landscape allowing the rapid expansion of suburbs to cater for the influx of people.6 Between 1920 and 1930 more than 2,000,000 people came to California, and 1,272,037 of those settled in Los Angeles County.7 As Carey McWilliams suggests, it was during these years of rapid boom that “the village began to disappear and the city, at long last, to emerge.”8 The growth of Los Angeles, and its entrance into the psyche of the American people as the “Promised Land,”9 was by no means coincidental. The authorities and developers of the region saw the 1 Nina Hoffman. President, National Geographic, from, Library Journal. http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA156293.html Jan. 8th 2001. 2 Holmes. A.M. Los Angeles: People, Places and The Castle on the Hill. Washington. D.C. National Geographic, 2002. p. xv. 3 Jefferson, T. ‘A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of American’, in General Congress Assembled. 1776. In Thomas Jefferson: Writings: Ed. Merrill D. Peterson. New York: The Library of America. 1984 P. 19 4 Ellis, Joseph J. American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson. New York: Random House, 1996. pp. 253-4. 5 McWilliams, C. Southern California An Island on the Land. Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1983. p. 129. 6 McWilliams, pp. 129-30. 7 McWilliams, p. 135. 8 McWilliams, p. 161. 9 Holmes, A.M. p. 17. 6 opportunity provided for them by the unique topography and climate of the area. Although the area was dry, this was quickly solved with the introduction of water from across the state, leaving a landscape of beaches along the coast, mountains and trees to the rear and desert beyond. When irrigated, this mix of topography produced an almost year-long growing period for farmers, and fresh produce such as citrus fruits. Once advertisers coupled this with the warm climate, and with the potential humidity regulated by sea breezes meeting the cool mountain air, they had an image of a healthy outdoor life to sell to the population of America. Once these images began to be carried across the country, along with the fresh oranges being grown in the region, the influx to Southern California was inevitable, and within ten years there was a population increase of almost 115%10 causing the strange phenomena that Garet Garrett observed as early as 1930, whereby every other person in Los Angeles had been there less than five years.11 This statistic has changed little as Los Angeles has expanded. The 2000 census shows that more than a third of inhabitants in Los Angeles County are foreign born, and this doesn’t include individuals who have moved into the area from other states in the union.12 Los Angeles has intrigued Americans and non-Americans alike because of the way it embodies and makes manifest notions of the American dream, and has thrived on this mythology. It is also a place that is frequently seen as “simultaneously a city of the future and the past,”13 that has become what Holmes refers to as an “epicentre for visionaries, romantics and dreamers.”14 It is clear that Holmes herself cannot help but be caught up in the city’s dream, it’s interweaving of fact and fiction. She idealises about the “fantasy life” she will live whilst there, and how she will “capture my own Los Angeles” during her “exotic adventure.”15 Once again, Holmes’ encapsulates something that lies at the core of Los Angeles, not only as a place, but as an idea: it is a city of (re)imagining, one where people come to change their lives and live out the myths and promises of the American dream in a landscape of perpetual blue skies and sunshine. It is where “men and women are elevated”16 and anything seems possible. As Kevin Starr, Southern California’s most comprehensive historian puts it, California, and by extension Los Angeles, is “linked imaginatively with the most compelling of American myths, the pursuit of happiness.”17 It is not simply the seemingly perfect climate and mix of geographies that has produced the ongoing appeal of Los Angeles and Southern California: the attraction has carried further than the literal, growing from the initial physical properties of the place, to a deeper psychic lure. The root of this cultural ideology can be found in the advertising images first put out about California, with their depiction of a “perfect” life amongst the orange groves, and has since then been built upon, cementing the image of Los 10 McWilliams, C.
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