Los Angeles marks both Thelonious Ellison’s literary and personal life in Southern California and the point of departure from the home he will leave behind. The city appears through brief but consequential episodes: a visit connected to readings and Linda Mallory, a rain-soaked return to Santa Monica, and, later, the move east that follows news of his family’s needs.

Literary and Personal Connections

Los Angeles enters Thelonious Ellison’s recollection of his relationship with Linda Mallory. They had slept together three times; one of those occasions was in Los Angeles, where Linda was visiting to give readings. The encounter belongs to a wider, uneasy connection between private intimacy and literary circles. Linda’s work and associations place her among the innovative writers of the Nouveau Roman Society, whose members resent Thelonious Ellison for his success with a realistic novel, his outspoken criticism of their work, and the regard French readers show his writing.

The Los Angeles visit is one part of a relationship recounted with unsentimental candor. Thelonious Ellison describes attraction, sex, and Linda’s pursuit of male attention alongside his judgment of her writing. The city thus appears not as a fully depicted social world but as a remembered setting for an intermittent relationship, linked to the literary travels that bring them together.

Rain, Return, and Santa Monica

On another arrival in Los Angeles, heavy rain has washed away hillsides and homes, flooded parts of Newport and Long Beach, and backed up traffic on every freeway. Thelonious Ellison drives through the stalled traffic toward home in Santa Monica. The weather and delays accompany a restlessness he cannot yet explain: he senses that he has seen or heard something wrong, but cannot identify what has unsettled him.

At home, the ordinary details of his evening continue. He brushes his teeth carefully, following the dentist’s instructions as relayed through the hygienist, then goes to bed. The transition from congested streets to this private routine leads into a dream in which his father’s stories, his sister’s anxiety, and an unanswered question converge. Los Angeles and Santa Monica frame the return to familiar surroundings; the dream, rather than the city itself, gives form to the unease that follows him home.

Departure from Southern California

The family crisis eventually turns Thelonious Ellison’s Santa Monica life into a life he must relinquish. After learning that Bill Ellison cannot take on the care their mother needs, he imagines himself packing his apartment, takes leave from teaching, puts his belongings in storage, and flies east on an L1011. He moves in with his mother and Lorraine. His account emphasizes the speed and weight of the change: the move is already taking shape while he sits with Bill at the kitchen table, and the needs of his family redirect his life away from Southern California.

Los Angeles therefore carries two different kinds of memory. It is associated with readings and a brief intimacy, but also with the home and independent life Thelonious Ellison leaves when responsibility for his mother becomes unavoidable. The city’s most vivid physical appearance is the rainstorm; its lasting narrative significance lies in the contrast between the life he had there and the caregiving life he takes up after returning east.