More a version of here than home

S.J. CAHN

It was talked about this summer. It was lambasted. Criticized.

But for producers of the Fox TV show “The O.C.,” what mattered was

that it was watched.

That show started back up last week, and it seems sure to enrage

Newport Beach residents anew with its take on life in Orange County.

During the summer, as people -- including quite a few in the Pilot

newsroom -- watched “The O.C.,” I wrestled with a similar

fictionalizing of my hometown: Manhattan Beach.

A high school friend of mine, Michael Scott Moore, published his

first novel, set in the early 1980s in a fictional beach town called

Calaveras Beach. More than a few of the characters in “Too Much of

Nothing” are familiar, as is the locale and the feel of place.

Where I grew up in the ‘80s reminds me much of Newport Beach today

(as I’ve written about a few times in these pages). While Manhattan

Beach has become “Beverly Hills by the Beach” (my title for it),

Newport -- with the exception of the gated communities in Newport

Coast -- seems to have maintained something akin to the down- home

feel you encounter throughout the city. I attribute that to the

harbor and boating lifestyle, which I think is the unifying character

of the town, more than to, say, the beach -- which might seem the

usual suspect.

For that reason, while I was reading the book, I thought it might

paint a more picture familiar to Newport Beach residents than to

those in Manhattan Beach. And it may say a little something about

where Newport Beach has been and what is has become, especially for

those of us who grew up during the 1980s. (At the least, our former

high school teacher who lives on Balboa Island should be interested.)

It tells the story of a hesitant high school boy -- by any account

one who would be thought of as a “good” kid -- who goes slightly off

in the wrong direction, largely drawn by a friend. This friend, and

this gives away nothing, ends up murdering him (the wages of even a

little sin, and all). The story of how this boy falls is played

against a background of false idealism, false impressions and

misguided adolescent hopes set in a pastiche of sorts of a bygone

Southern California.

At least, that’s certainly how Mike sees the past versus the

present.

“It’s a totally different place,” he told me when comparing the

area of 20 years ago to today. “Developers have managed to make it

even denser and more artificial than it was in the ‘80s. Out of

laziness, I never got around to changing a few place names in the

book, and when I was in L.A. for a reading two weeks ago I realized

it didn’t matter, because those places were gone. I had no idea I was

writing a historical novel.”

Why the difference?

“It looks to me like pure bloat,” he said. “Everything that’s

happened to Southern California in the last 20 years is the result of

uninterrupted prosperity. But that also makes the area fascinating to

write about. Prosperity and its drawbacks are the national trend.”

Without prompting, Mike also mentioned Newport Beach’s own

fictional self when I asked what he’d want readers to take away from

the novel.

“A sense of how the shallowness of Southern California is not

restricted to rich people -- it infects the opposition, too,” he

said. “I think Rage Against the Machine is hopelessly shallow, for

example. The fact that their so-called rebellion sounds eloquent to

the producers of ‘The O.C.’ speaks volumes.”

Maybe if I’d grown up in Newport, I’d be more a fan -- grudgingly

or not -- of “The O.C.” After spending some days reading someone’s

vision of my own world, I only can imagine what it might be like

seeing it rendered in bright Fox color.

Not that I’m advocating that frightening thought.

* S.J. CAHN is the managing editor. He can be reached at (949)

574-4233 or by e-mail at s.j.cahn@latimes.com.