Colin Marshall sits down in the Hollywood Hills with Geoff Nicholson, author of such nonfiction books as The Lost Art of Walking and its more recent follow-up Walking in Ruins as well as novels like Bleeding London, Gravity’s Volkswagen, and the new The City Under the Skin. They discuss which cities contributed to his concept of “the city”; the resonances between the novel’s fictional Telstar Hotel and the LAX Theme Building, as well as the significance of their restaurants, revolving or otherwise; the failure of our intention to “build our way out of any problem”; when he first saw the “fading Hollywood” of the late seventies, and its process of de-ruination; how to take the “subway” to Stonehenge; whether cities ever develop except through bubbles and busts; how The City Under the Skin dramatizes the ever-present struggle for a city’s future form; what everyone would draw if everyone had to draw a map of Los Angeles by hand; when all the murders, tattoos, and kidnappings got into the novel; his time at the glorious ruins at the Salton Sea; the “haunted house” nearby that turned new again; how elevation became an advantage in Los Angeles, at least notionally; what kind of building you get under the ideas of the American dream and “the Englishman in his castle”; why the deed to his house includes the phrase “no Hindus”; and whether he envisions even new developments as the ruins of the future.
Download the interview here as an MP3 or on iTunes.
(photo: Naomi Harris)
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