Terrible winds are howling in Southern California. Wildfires can break out at any time. The Pacific Palisades and Eaton fires continue to burn. Quotes about how wind and fire threatened and defined the region spread equally quickly.

And, of course, there’s the one from Raymond Chandler: “It’s one of those hot, dry Santa Anas where you come down from the mountain pass and curl your hair, get your nerves pulsing, and your Itchy skin. On nights like this, every drinking party ended in a fight, with meek little wives touching the blades of their meat cleavers and studying their husbands’ necks.”

Joan Didion said: "The weather in Los Angeles is disaster, apocalyptic weather."

Nerds are particularly fond of Nathaneal Davis, whose novel "The Day of the Locust" about the shattered dreams of Los Angeles is famous for its final scene of the city burning, which brings its protagonist to life of a painting: “He wanted to show the city burning at noon so that the flames would have to compete with the desert sun and appear less terrifying and more like bright flags flying from the rooftops and windows rather than a Horrible massacre."

And, of course, there's Mike Davis, whose essay "The Case for Letting Malibu Burn" has been hailed as prophetic literature by progressive Angelenos since it was published in Los Angeles Weekly in 1995, while It was also vehemently reviled by conservatives and suburbanites.

For decades, every time a fire breaks out or Santa Ana season rolls around, I’ve seen reporters and others share these four pieces and more—“harvesting heat from far-off deserts and invading cities with fury, creating heat and Season of Fire” (John Leitch), “The Mountains Are Full of Fire” (Jim Morrison in the Doors classic “L.A. Woman”). And then there's "Beverly Hills 90210" - well, the infamous Santa Anas episode you can find on YouTube.

I take the trouble to read them because they are well-crafted ideas that few writers can surpass. This time, however, so many people posted the same quotes that the brilliance became banal.

Faced with so much pain, why do so many people feel nauseated?

I called historian William Deverell, director of the Huntington-USC Institute for California and the West and one of the smartest people I know about Southern California legend and culture. one. Many of his friends and colleagues lost their homes in the Eaton Fire, and the Pasadena resident was "surrounded by smoke and grief."

A friend recently sent him a quote from Didion, signed "Joan of Didion."

"We've allowed (Dideon and the usual suspects) to become latter-day Jeremiahs, and maybe for good reason," he said. "They really have the ability to put phrases together that make us think, 'I'd love to say something like this, but I can't.'"

The problem, he believes, is that "we've ceded the right to be the authority to them as opposed to other people who also know a lot."

He cites fire historian Stephen Pyne and UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain as writers on Southern California weather who should know more but may never because much of their work is in academic fields .

“Perhaps one of the challenges we face,” Deverell said, “is that we reach a little too far because some of our people are still alive and well and their quotes may be germane to every detail. ”

That’s why he hopes the words of survivors of the Pacific Palisades and Eton disasters will be read and carried forward by future generations as well as the more well-known voices.

"In due course we need to get their oral histories so that some good can come out of so much bad," he said.

Lisa Alvarez, an English professor at Irvine Valley College, teaches students about Southern California wind and wildfire literature “so they know where they are now and who was there” here, and who will be here in the future.”

She doesn't mind seeing these classic quotes every time Santa Anas and fires happen, "because I'm a Californian," she joked. "It's comforting to share what we know. You want to be part of a moment. Fire is an old story. The California fires are a very old story."

But it was sickening to read, and it reminded her to challenge her friends and students to read more widely.

“They were published (in prestigious publications) and read,” Alvarez said of people like Davis and Didion. "You have to try to find other people. That speaks to the nature of our literacy."

The Modjeska Canyon resident volunteered on the community's fire patrol and had to flee his home several times during fires but never lost it. The spring semester has just begun at Owen Valley College, and she plans to share essays about wildfire and wind by lesser-known writers, such as poets Ray Young Bear and Liz Gonzalez. Another article she has her students read is a wonderful 1993 Times article by longtime Los Angeles chronicler Michael Ventura, which was published until my time on Alvarez’s Facebook I had never heard of this article before seeing it on Axis.

“We need more prophets,” Alvarez concluded. "We need a better prophecy."

I’m seeing a writer whose work is being quoted a lot right now, and whose work should be shared more: Octavia E. Butler, a black science fiction writer, a native of Pasadena, Buried in Altadena Cemetery, which was partially burned last week.

The racial reckoning of 2020 has brought her work to a wider audience, especially "Parable of the Sower," a 1993 novel set in a dystopian Southern California in 2024 that's not far from where we live today places are surprisingly similar.

In Butler's book, climate change wreaks havoc on what was once a paradise. Social inequality is abhorrent. Crime is out of control. Almost everyone suffers from it. Butler believes that whatever hope exists needs to be tempered by the reality that we must first suffer.

“In order to rise from its own ashes,” she wrote in one of the lines I see most, “the phoenix must first burn.”

In honor of Didion, Davis and the other literary legends who wrote about our demonic winds and fires, here are the quotes Southern Californians should take to heart right now.