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Ξ November 22nd, 2008 | → | ∇ Uncategorized |
The Books of the States: California (55 electoral votes; Guest: Sean Wilsey)
Throughout this whole process, the great state of California has loomed enormous. 55 electoral votes? Are you kidding? Well, on one hand, as the person who has to cut and paste a URL into this post for every book on the list, 55 still seems like a lot. But as someone who has now sat down to look through possible California books, 55 seems like nothing. 55? You could get to 55 with good hardboiled detective novels from California alone, or with books on Hollywood alone–sometimes it seems like there are 55 important books solely about water rights in LA County. California might be the land of beautiful weather and moving pictures, but somebody has to be staying inside and writing–and not just screenplays.
It’s a big job, and I was very happy to hand most of it off to a local (or former local), who has been thinking geographically for quite a while now: Sean Wilsey, one of the editors of State by State, who grew up in San Francisco, as any reader of his bestselling memoir, Oh the Glory of It All, knows. He lives in New York now, with his wife, Daphne Beal (who covered our previous state, Wisconsin, earlier this week) but as you can hear in our interview earlier this year, there’s no mistaking his mellow (and stoked!) Northern California vibe. Speaking of mellow, Sean has concocted a definitive (and only somewhat flawed) dichotomy to represent the Golden State, which I will let him introduce below.
And speaking of dichotomies, this state turned out to be too big for just one person. Sean’s list runs to 30 books, so I’ll add some more below: I should stick to 25 to make things clean and tidy, but I know I’m going to blow way past that. As it happens, Sean’s list is understandably heavy on the Bay Area, while I happen to know SoCal (or at least its books) a little better, so our two halves will match the geographical division in this state-that-could-be-a-country. (One thing we agree on, though: the deliriously wonderful McTeague, certainly one of the weirdest (and therefore among the best) books in the American canon.) I’m even more sure than usual that many, many worthy titles will get left out, so please make your own additions to the nominees (or your criticisms of ours) in the comments below.
Here’s Sean’s half, starting with his introductory note:
Here’s a motley-looking list of books that would not have been written if California did not exist. It’s a list full of omissions. Most notably absent is the work John Steinbeck–but I have never much cared for the man. I’ve listed these chronologically, starting with American literature’s greatest account of a beer-drinking dentist, McTeague, set in San Francisco at the end of the 19th century. Also, in search of an organizing principle, I have decided to contend there are two modes of being if you’re a Californian: You’re always nice, but within the framework of niceness you can either be mellow or stoked. I have categorized these books along those lines. And some of them manage to be both stoked and mellow. Here goes:
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