Los Angeles without a Map | Richard Rayner | Granta Magazine

Los Angeles Without A Map

Richard Rayner

‘I was a hysterical adolescent. But I was a hysterical adolescent with a credit card and there was a seat available.’

I lay by the pool in the heat. The clock on the Dunes gave the temperature as 117 degrees and the time as 12.03, when the man with the green Hawaiian shirt announced himself.

‘Hi. Name’s Mal.’

I pulled myself up on to my elbows. Mal was small and tanned and wide as a lorry. He looked a little like the actor Jan Michael Vincent. He wore a red baseball cap that said SCREW YOU.

Essays & Memoir
The Online Edition
1st June 1986
Essays & Memoir
The Online Edition
1st June 1986

Richard Rayner

Richard Rayner, born in Yorkshire, is now living in Los Angeles. His books include Los Angeles Without a Map and The Elephant. ‘Rich Rich Rich’ was included in his memoir, The Blue Suit (Picador, 1995). He is a former Granta editor.

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Rich Rich Rich

Richard Rayner

’I was sweating, I was faint. The yellow on the walls was brilliant and burning.‘

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Los Angeles

Richard Rayner

‘Los Angeles was a lot like South Africa. The apartheid wasn't enshrined by law, but by economics and geography, and it was just as powerful.’

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A Discourse on the Elephant

Richard Rayner

‘This is not the story of my life, at least not the story of all of it, but it is the story of my father.’

Fiction | The Online Edition

Perfection

Vincenzo Latronico

‘They couldn’t put their finger on exactly what it was they craved, but they knew it was very different to what they had.’

Fiction by Vincenzo Latronico, translated by Sophie Hughes.

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The Messiah of Cadoxton

Susan Pedersen

‘The script of script production rather followed the script of sex: it was intimate, exciting, boundary-crossing, and left the participants changed.’

Susan Pedersen on paranormal love in the Balfour family.

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Fat Girls in Des Moines

Bill Bryson

‘When I was growing up I used to think that the best thing about coming from Des Moines was that it meant you didn't come from anywhere else in Iowa. By Iowa standards, Des Moines is a Mecca of cosmopolitanism, a dynamic hub of wealth and education, where people wear three-piece suits and dark socks, often simultaneously.’

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