Los Angeles As Dream Factory ERICKSON: Well, I wrote about Los Angeles after I came back, and I'm fascinated with Los Angeles. I can't say that I love Los Angeles, and I sort of distrust anybody that says they either love or hate Los Angeles because it's like loving or hating a blank slate, and it depends what you want to write on the black slate. Los Angeles is a relatively laivable city if you know who you are and what you want to do. It imposes no civic identity of its own. It's not like New York or Paris, where you may not know who you are, but you know you are a New Yorker, or you know you are a Parisian. Here if you don't know who you are, you end up walking up and down Hollywood Boulevard talking to yourself. And that' why there are so many genuinely crazy people here, because Los Angels is this dream factory. They come here looking for Los Angels to help them define themselves, and L.A. ain't gonna do it. It's just not going to do it. So I'm back here. From a political standpoint it would be much more to my advantage to live in New York, but it's not who I am. I'm not a New Yorker, and I like the way Los Angeles cuts me loose, you know.
--Sometimes other people say it so much better.