Where Is the Underworld?

Woody Allen apparently once said to Groucho Marx, “I don’t know how you live in California. For a man of your piercing intellect to be able to live on the West Coast is incredible to me.”

When we get to Allen’s film Manhattan in our Writing New York course later in the term, one of the subjects we discuss is the rivalry between New York and Los Angeles over the production of what we might call the national imaginary. New York’s place as the preeminent producer of cultural images and symbols, by virtue of its role as the center of the U.S. publishing industry starting in the middle of the nineteenth century, was challenged and — arguably — overtaken by Los Angeles, which became the center of the U.S. film industry in the early part of the twentieth century.

Allen has a love-hate (well, mostly hate) relationship with Los Angeles. The year after Manhattan was released, he said:

What I feel about New York is hard to say in a few words. It’s really the rhythm of the city. You feel it the moment you walk down the street. There’s hundreds of good restaurants, thousands of brilliant paintings, you see all the old movies, all the new ones … It has to do with nerves, with the blood that runs through the city. It’s dangerous, noisy. It’s not peaceful or easy and because of it you feel more alive. It’s more in keeping with what human beings are meant to feel about the world … There’s more conflict than anywhere else. The struggle to survive here is much more exciting than Los Angeles, say, where everything is pleasant. I mean, all those people sitting in their tubs, can you imagine it?

I imagine that Allen would have approved of these passages from Rick Riordan’s book The Lightning Thief:

“Well now, there’s Mount Olympus in Greece. ANd then there’s the home of the gods, the convergence point of their powers, which did indeed used to be on Mount Olympus. It’s still called Mount Olympus, out of respect to the old ways, but the palace moves, Percy, just as the gods do.”

“You mean the Greek gods are here? Like … in America?”

“Well, certainly. The gods move with the heart of the West.”

“The what?”

“Cow now, Percy. What you call ‘Western civilization.’ Do you think it’s just an abstract concept? No, it’s a living force. A collective consciousness that has burned bright for thousands of years. The gods are part of it. You might even say they are the source of it …”

*

“You’ve been to Olympus?”

“Some of us year-rounders — Luke and Clarisse and I and a few others — we took a field trip during winter solstice. That’s when the gods have their big annual council.”

“But … how did you get there?”

“The Long Island Railroad, of course. You get off at Penn Station. Empire State Building, special elevator to the six hundredth floor.” She looked at me like she was sure I must know this already. “You are a New Yorker, right?”

*

“The entrance to the Underworld is always in the west. It moves from age to age, just like Olympus. Right now, of course, it’s in America.”

“Where?”

Chiron looked surprised. “I thought that would be obvious enough. The entrance to the Underworld is in Los Angeles.”

Previously. And. And more.