English-language writers condescended to Southern California for so long that it became a national reflex, a semi-voluntary tic.
W.H. Auden called Los Angeles “the Great Wrong Place.” Truman Capote said it was redundant to die there. Harold Ross, the editor of The New Yorker, wrote in 1941 that Californians “live in a world of rumors, dreams and superstitions, because newspapers out there don't print much news.”
Pauline Kael described why, in the movies, everyone loves to see L.A. crumble. (“Who needs a reason to destroy L.A.? The city stands convicted in everyone's eyes.”) Don DeLillo, in “White Noise,” said the state deserves whatever doom is visited upon it because it invented “the concept of lifestyle.”
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