Lawrence Weschler Vermeer in Bosnia, Pantheon Books: NY, 2004.(The chapter The Light of L.A. appeared as L.A. Glows in the 23 February 1998 The New Yorker.) 1998, 1946
"Nevertheless, the light seems more uncanny than ever-or, rather, it may simply be reverting to its original splendor. What with the thermal inversion, even as the smog has subsided a softer version of airlight phenomenon has persisted -one that Juan Cabrillo, the first European to venture into these parts, back in 1542 . . . noted, labeled the curve of shore "The Bay of Smokes." Back in 1946, Carey McWilliams, the poet laureate of California historians, recorded how, the region's aridity notwithstanding, "the charm of Southern California is largely to be found in the air and light. Light and air are really one element: indivisible, mutally interacting, thoroughly interpenetrated."
When the sunlight is not screened and filtered by the moisture laden air, the land is revealed in all its semiarid poverty. The bald, sculptured mountains stand forth in a harsh and glaring light. But let the light turn soft with ocean mist, and miraculous changes occur. The bare mountain ranges, appallingly harsh in contour, suddenly become wrapped in an entrancing ever-changing loveliness of light and shadow . . . and the land itself becomes a thing of beauty.
McWilliams went on to point out how, typically, desert light "brings out the sharpness of points, angles, and forms. But . . . this is not a desert light nor is it tropical for it has neutral tones. (Elsewhere he suggests that "the color of the land is in the light.) It is Southern California light and it has no counterpart in the world."