Hi, Alexander!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

 AH>  [...]  I imagine the narrator is referring to someplace
 AH>  like Las Vegas, where there is an air of unreality about
 AH>  everything.  When I visited this city years ago there was
 AH>  a hotel with a neon sign cowboy who tipped his hat & said
 AH>  "Hi, Pardner!" at all hours of the day & night, and there
 AH>  were many "wedding chapels" where folks could get married
 AH>  after a quickie divorce in Reno.  But I wouldn't expect
 AH>  other folks to draw such conclusions if they live eighteen
 AH>  hours away by air....  :-)


          I wasn't forgetting you there, BTW.  At a rough estimate I think you
would be +/- the same distance away as Paul... in the opposite direction.  ;-)



 AK>  Yes, the heroes of the novel were in Los Angeles, in the
 AK>  area where film stars live.


          Ah... that explains a lot.  In your original citation there was a bus
 chugging westward, presumably carrying at least one of these heroes.  Las
Vegas is four hours by road east of Los Angeles.  And I can well imagine how
somebody from further east who is hoping to obtain a job in the film industry
might pass through Las Vegas en route to Los Angeles.

          I suppose the bus might have been carrying actors from one scene in a
 movie set to another, but in that case the direction of travel would be of
very little significance to the reader.  From what I remember of Los Angeles
there's nothing particularly unusual about the architecture.  OTOH the economy
seems to depend quite a bit less on entertainment & tourism than that of Las
Vegas.  :-)




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+
 * Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver CANADA (1:153/716)