“What could be more hellish than a gangster vision of paradise?”

“On thinking about Hell,” Brecht wrote, “I gather/My brother Shelly found it was a place/Much like the city of London.  I/Who live in Los Angeles and not in London/Find, on thinking about Hell, that it must be/Still more  like Los Angeles. /In Hell too/There are, I’ve no doubt, these luxuriant gardens/With flowers as big as trees, which of course wither/Unhesitantly if not nourished with very expensive water…/And endless processions of cars/Lighter than their own shadows, faster than/Mad thoughts, gleaming vehicles in which /Jolly looking people come from nowhere and nowhere bound/And houses, built for happy people, therefore standing empty/Even when lived in”

Above quoted from the book: “City of Nets. a portrait of Hollywood in the 1940′s by Otto Friedrich.

A book on my reading list.

Photo: Los Angeles, 2008