{"id":2324,"date":"2014-07-15T01:54:23","date_gmt":"2014-07-15T08:54:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=2324"},"modified":"2014-07-15T01:56:54","modified_gmt":"2014-07-15T08:56:54","slug":"notebook-on-cities-and-culture-s4e46-mar-incognita-with-geoff-nicholson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=2324","title":{"rendered":"Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E46: Mar Incognita with Geoff Nicholson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-2325\" style=\"border: 0;\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/gn2ok.jpg\" alt=\"gn2ok\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/gn2ok.jpg 300w, http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/gn2ok-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>Colin Marshall sits down in the Hollywood Hills with <a href=\"http:\/\/geoff-nicholson.tripod.com\/\">Geoff Nicholson<\/a>, author of such nonfiction books as\u00a0<em>The Lost Art of Walking<\/em> and its more recent follow-up\u00a0<em>Walking in Ruins<\/em> as well as novels like\u00a0<em>Bleeding London, Gravity&#8217;s Volkswagen<\/em>, and the new\u00a0<em>The City Under the Skin<\/em>. They discuss which cities contributed to his concept of &#8220;the city&#8221;; the resonances between the novel&#8217;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 &#8220;build our way out of any problem&#8221;; when he first saw the &#8220;fading Hollywood&#8221; of the late seventies, and its process of de-ruination; how to take the &#8220;subway&#8221; to Stonehenge; whether cities ever develop except through bubbles and busts; how\u00a0<em>The City Under the Skin<\/em> dramatizes the ever-present struggle for a city&#8217;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 &#8220;haunted house&#8221; 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 &#8220;the Englishman in his castle&#8221;; why the deed to his house includes\u00a0the phrase &#8220;no Hindus&#8221;; and whether he envisions even new developments as the ruins of the future.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Download the interview\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/colinmarshall\/NCC_S4E46_Geoff_Nicholson.output.mp3\">here as an MP3<\/a><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u00a0or on\u00a0<\/span><a style=\"color: #555555;\" href=\"http:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/notebook-on-cities-culture\/id266539442\">iTunes<\/a><span style=\"color: #000000;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>(photo: Naomi Harris)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Colin Marshall sits down in the Hollywood Hills with Geoff Nicholson, author of such nonfiction books as\u00a0The Lost Art of Walking and its more recent follow-up\u00a0Walking in Ruins as well as novels like\u00a0Bleeding London, Gravity&#8217;s Volkswagen, and the new\u00a0The City Under the Skin. They discuss which cities contributed to his concept of &#8220;the city&#8221;; the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-los-angeles-primer","category-los-angeles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2324"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2328,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2324\/revisions\/2328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}