'City of Quartz'? Los Angeles is indeed bright, hard, opaque. Even the astonishing sunsets one can see from Interstate 15, looking west towards Pomona, have a sepulchral flush to them as the red light filters through the foul air rolling towards Riverside and the desert seventy miles east of the Pacific. And when the Santa Ana winds blow the other way and clean out the whole basin there's nothing warm in the colour tones even then, just an eerie depth of field so clear throughout its focal range that it's hard to keep an accurate sense of perspective.

LRB 10 January 1991 | PDF Download