Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles - Literary References

Literary References

In his mathematical fantasy short story "—And He Built a Crooked House—" author Robert A. Heinlein characterized Laurel Canyon (in the opinion of Hollywood residents) as:

"—where we keep the violent cases." The Canyonites—the brown-legged women, the trunks-clad men constantly busy building and rebuilding their slaphappy unfinished houses—regard with faint contempt the dull creatures who live down in the flats, and treasure in their hearts the secret knowledge that they, and only they, know how to live.

Heinlein gives the address of his protagonist in that story as 8775 Lookout Mountain Avenue, "across the street from the Hermit—the original Hermit of Hollywood" (i.e., himself).

In real life, during the early 1940s Heinlein's home on Lookout Mountain Avenue was the meeting place of the Mañana Literary Society, an informal but regular gathering of science fiction and fantasy authors. Considerable of Anthony Boucher's mystery novel Rocket to the Morgue (1942) revolves around such an SF writers' group, the characters being thinly disguised representations of the members who had gathered in the Heinlein house in 1940 and 1941, and scenes in the novel are thereby set in the Laurel Canyon neighborhood.