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A review by misterjt
A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, and L.A.'s Scandalous Coming of Age by Richard Rayner
4.0
While this narrative nonfiction tome is set in 20s and 30s Los Angeles, my soundtrack for reading was 60s and 70s California Soul. For whatever reason, it fits perfectly in my mind with what is essentially the true story of the birth of noir in America. It probably has to do with my own indoctrination into a love of noir through Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins tales. That fictional Los Angeles is dripping with soul. A Black soul. California Soul.
A Bright and Guilty Place, however, is about the creation of Los Angeles's soul and, as I've spent a good amount of time in the last few years in other American cities, this is what I'm interested in. What makes my home the way it is? What makes other places the way they are? What I find most unique about Los Angeles is it's kind of pathological desire to look forward. We don't make much of history here. Buildings get put up and pulled down without much concern for their place in time. With the sun shining bright on us nearly every day, there's a nearly constant belief that things will be better tomorrow so you can forget yesterday. There's a wonderfulness to this kind of outlook. It supports our population of dreamers and creators in a way that I haven't quite seen elsewhere.
But there's also a dark side. Dreamers are also risk-takers, sometimes to a fault. Forward thinking breeds confidence and, with it, confidence men and women who seek to take advantage of hope and possibility. In between, there are those just trying to get along and they often are hit with the collateral damage of both the bright and the guilty. Rayner's story looks deeply at that and, it seems, attempts to answer the question of whether or not our city's duality must corrupt those who seek to stake a claim here or can "good" win out?
Fans of the likes of Mosley and Chandler or films like Chinatown and L.A. Confidential already know the answer.
Doesn't stop us from trying to come out ahead, though, does it? As Rayner notes, "on an average day, Los Angeles receives 14 times more sunlight than New York."
That means it shines on a dog's ass here more often than most places.
I like those odds.
A Bright and Guilty Place, however, is about the creation of Los Angeles's soul and, as I've spent a good amount of time in the last few years in other American cities, this is what I'm interested in. What makes my home the way it is? What makes other places the way they are? What I find most unique about Los Angeles is it's kind of pathological desire to look forward. We don't make much of history here. Buildings get put up and pulled down without much concern for their place in time. With the sun shining bright on us nearly every day, there's a nearly constant belief that things will be better tomorrow so you can forget yesterday. There's a wonderfulness to this kind of outlook. It supports our population of dreamers and creators in a way that I haven't quite seen elsewhere.
But there's also a dark side. Dreamers are also risk-takers, sometimes to a fault. Forward thinking breeds confidence and, with it, confidence men and women who seek to take advantage of hope and possibility. In between, there are those just trying to get along and they often are hit with the collateral damage of both the bright and the guilty. Rayner's story looks deeply at that and, it seems, attempts to answer the question of whether or not our city's duality must corrupt those who seek to stake a claim here or can "good" win out?
Fans of the likes of Mosley and Chandler or films like Chinatown and L.A. Confidential already know the answer.
Doesn't stop us from trying to come out ahead, though, does it? As Rayner notes, "on an average day, Los Angeles receives 14 times more sunlight than New York."
That means it shines on a dog's ass here more often than most places.
I like those odds.