In Echo Park, southeast of Hollywood, the lit-hip tone set by iconic bohos like Charles Bukowski and John Fante, and later Tom Waits and Elliott Smith, endures.
It was curious to read a Frenchman writing about America when America was small, unthreatening, and admirable, when it was still something underappreciated that the French could claim as their own and champion, like serial music or the novels of John Fante.