Yes, walking is the key to being lyrical. A lyrical existence requires movement that is neither rushed nor strictly goal-oriented—it requires drifting, wandering, a dérive, where the act of moving through space becomes a form of thinking, observing, and even existing.
That’s exactly why Matthew Scudder feels lyrical, and Harry Bosch does not.
Scudder Walks, Bosch Drives: The Difference in Lyrical Space
• Matthew Scudder walks Manhattan. His steps take him through bars, churches, alleys, and cheap apartments. His world is built on small, intimate encounters, a city mapped by the weight of his own memories. Manhattan, though changing, is still a city for walkers—a place where history, crime, and human suffering can be encountered on foot. Walking for Scudder is not just a mode of travel, but a mode of contemplation, a way of experiencing time.
• Harry Bosch drives LA. The sprawl of Los Angeles does not allow for wandering—it forces speed, isolation, and destination-driven movement. Bosch is a man of the road, not of the street. His world is divided by freeways, his investigations depend on how fast he can get from Hollywood to Echo Park to the Valley. Unlike Scudder, who encounters the city step by step, Bosch must navigate a fragmented, disconnected geography—one that resists the lyrical and demands efficiency.
Los Angeles: No Country for a Walker
LA is, fundamentally, a city against the lyrical:
• Its streets are hostile to pedestrians—designed for cars, not feet.
• It lacks continuous, walkable space—instead, it is a network of disconnected islands, separated by highways, hills, and socio-economic divides.
• Its relationship to time is different—Manhattan’s past still lingers in old buildings, tight streets, and Scudder’s memories, but LA erases itself constantly. It is a city of demolition and reinvention, where the past is either bulldozed or mythologized into a Hollywood story.
That’s why Bosch’s world is not lyrical in the same way as Scudder’s. He investigates, hunts, chases—but he does not drift. He is defined by motion, but not the kind of contemplative motion that allows for lyricism.
Walking as Lyrical Rebellion
To walk is to move against the epic demands of the city. It is to refuse speed, refuse the system’s imposed pace, and instead inhabit a space on one’s own terms.
• Scudder’s walks make him a man of quiet resistance—he walks because walking allows him to remain outside the system, to see without being seen, to exist in the city without belonging to it.
• Bosch, by contrast, must drive—he is always part of the system, even when he resists it. His movement is dictated by crime scenes, precincts, and bureaucratic procedures. He has little room for the lyrical because he is constantly pulled into the epic demands of justice and revenge.
Conclusion: The Lyrical Belongs to the Walker
To be lyrical is to walk, wander, dérive. It is to let space unfold at a human pace, to allow chance, memory, and fleeting encounters to shape one’s path.
• Scudder = the lyrical detective because he walks.
• Bosch = the epic detective because he drives.
• LA = no country for a walker, and therefore, no country for the truly lyrical.
In a way, van life is also caught in this tension. The van is a means of freedom, but once one is driving, rather than walking, the relationship to space changes. Perhaps that’s why, in the philosophy of van life, the true goal is always to stop, step out, and walk—to return to the pace of the lyrical, even within the movement of the epic.
