An Ode to the Writer’s Bungalow

The late Ray Bradbury, at home in his not-so-big-house in Cheviot Hills.

Defenders of mansions replacing smaller, individually designed homes insist that these are needed, and if they can be paid for, why should they not be available? They are a reward, an entitlement; the natural product of both the confidence in the housing market and the inherent confidence of the American persona. But to some observers, the McMansion is less the natural culmination of a “man’s home is his castle” ethos, and instead the apex of American isolationism.

Sarah Jane Stratford
“Home and History in the Fiction of Los Angeles”
The Los Angeles Review of Books