JAMES M. CAIN (1933) PARADISE : EXCERPT FROM WRITING LOS ANGELES
page 108-109
Wash out, then, the "land of sunshine, fruit, and flowers" : all these are here, but not with the lush, verdant fragrance that you have probably imagined. A celebrated movie comedian is credited with the remark that "the flowers don't smell and the women do," but in my observation nothing smells. Wash out the girl with the red cheeks peeping coyly from behind a spray of orange leaves. The girl is here, but the dry air has taken the red out of her cheeks; the orange trees are here, but they don't look that way: the whole picture has too much pep, life, and moisture in it....
Wash out the palm trees, half visible beyond the tap dancing platform. Palm trees are here, but they are all phonies, planted by people amused with the notion of a sub-tropical climate, and they are so out of harmony with their surroundings that they hardly - notice. Wash out the movie palazzos, so impressive in the photographs. They are here, too, at any rate in a place called Beverly Hills, not far from Hollywood; but they are like the palm trees, so implausible in their surroundings that they take on the lifelessness of movie wets. Above all, washout the cool green that seems to be the main feature of all illustrations got out by railroads. Wash that out and keep it out."
Page 112) Here Cain tries to come up with the positives
First, I would list the unfailing friendliness and courtesy of the people. It is a friendliness somewhat different from what you find elsewhere, for it does not as a rule include hospitality. The man who will take all sorts of trouble to direct you to some place you are trying to find does not ordinarily invite you into his house; it is not that he has any reason for keeping you out, it is merely that it does not occur to him to do it.
Hospitality, I think, comes when people have sent down roots it goes with pride in a home, pride in ancestors that built the home, conscious identification with a particular soil. These people, in one way or another, are all exiles. They have come here recently, and their hearts are really into the places that they left. Thus, if they do not do as much visiting with each other as you see in other parts of the country, or the gossiping that goes with visiting, they do have the quick friendliness that exiles commonly show, and I must say it is most agreeable...
With the friendliness and courtesy, I would bracket the excellent English that is spoke her. The Easterner, when he first hears it, is likely to mistake it for the glib chatter of a habitual salesmanship....
Writing Los Angeles
A Literary Anthology
Edited by David L. Ulin
Library of America publisher
Copyright 2002
