Memory and Desire
Memory and Desire by Bo Crane is a novel regarding the lives and loves during four different eras, each one located in an area around the Los Angeles River. The main characters are Native Americans seeing the first Spanish ships along the coast; the early Angelenos visited by the first Yankee sailors; two single women in the 20th Century beginning of Hollywood; a couple reuniting in the surfer rock-n-roll time of the ‘60s.
“What did Alice care about the events of the streets? Los Angeles was the western terminal of three important railroads. To her, the streets swirled through town like a muddy riveer, everyday swamped with new faces, with luggage and furniture and office equipment and hardware goods dragged through the avenus now overcrowded with cars as more and more carriages disappered. Nothing lasted.” (1913)
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
— T. S. Eliot, “The Waste Land”