Quotable: Richard Rodriguez On L.A. Glamour
"There was nothing reticent about L.A. Glamour was instant. The city took its generosity from the movies. You're beautiful if L.A. says you’re beautiful, goddammit.It was the sons of Jewish immigrants, the haberdasher's son and the tobacconist's son, who established the epic scale of the movies. Movies taught one big lesson: individual lives have scope and grandeur.
Of course L.A. is shallow. Lips that are ten feet long and faces that are forty feet high! But such faces magnify our lives, reassure us that single lives matter. The attention L.A. lavishes on a single face is as generous a metaphor as I can find for the love of God."
--Richard Rodriquez, Days of Obligation
