*****
Hi
Readers!
The
fabulously stylish Karen and I virtually bonded over our mutual love of vintage
typewriters (as seen on the stunning banner of Conceptual Reception) and so
when she invited me to guest post about the California novels that most
inspired me, I jumped at the chance.
Not
many people know this, but a novelist invented California. Really. Over five
hundred years ago, long before it was a real geographic place, California was
described in the pages of a book, written by Garci Ordonez de Montalvo, as a golden land “very near the
terrestrial paradise” and populated, almost exclusively, by courageous women. I
cannot tell you how fabulous I think this is. Not only because California
existed in the imagination before it existed on a map, but also because
California was quite literally written into being.
As a
Nor Cal native (and So Cal transplant) I’ve always been drawn to California
writers and it’s no secret that I have an incurable girl-crush on Joan Didion. Her use of whitespace is
particularly inspiring to me and, if forced, I’d have to choose her novel, Play It As It Lays, as my favorite book. Ever. Although
some may call my Didion ardor an obsession—it’s not stalking if she writes you
back—I maintain it’s not so much Didion the woman but rather the sound of Didion’s
words that have me so hung up. If you have yet to read Joan Didion I recommend
all of her California cannon (from Run
River to Where I Was From, with large bits of Blue Nights, and huge pieces of Slouching Towards Bethlehem
strategically tossed in-between) but most especially, I recommend Play It As It Lays (with the original
1970s paperback cover, if you can find it, because nothing says “serious
literature” like a topless blonde and a snake).
After
Didion, who for me will always be the author of my California I offer neither a rank list, nor the usual jacket
covers, but a compendium, of sorts; the models and voices that inspired me when
I set to work on So L.A. There is no London. No Norris. No Steinbeck, or
Chandler even. Not that their moonish valleys, railroad entanglements, big
sleeps and brambling grape vines aren’t inspiring, quite the contrary, but
chances are if you’re reading this, you already know their works—if not also
their words—and so instead I offer you:
---
Ask The Dust
(1939) by John Fante
Although
it is chronologically impossible, I’m secretly convinced Ask The Dust is
what happened in the stacks of the L.A. public library when Nathanael West’s Day
of the Locust (1939) and Charles Bukowski’s Post Office (1971) had a
torrid, and heart-achingly beautiful literary love affair. Pages were dog-eared.
Spines were spent. And nine months later Ask The Dust was born.
----
Why Did I Ever? (2001) by Mary Robison
Fragmented, fractured and wildly brilliant,
Robison’s Why Did I Ever tells the story of Money Brenton, a Hollywood
script doctor who struggles to make her way, while making the rent. Money has
ADD and a dysfunctional home life. What’s more, her son Paulie was recently the
victim of an unspeakable assault and her daughter Mev is a meth-addict. This
book is dark. This book is angry. This book (and everyone in it) is emotionally
damaged. And it’s also one of the funniest books I have ever read. In Why
Did I Ever Robison masterfully allows illness to not only define the
structure, but also the narration of her novel and the result is stunning. I
don’t use the word “genius” all too often, but Mary Robison is a genius. Because
she can write a chapter in three sentences, like this: “I feel around in my handbag, extract something,
use it, and put it back. Later on I might need something else. This
is my life, what my life is really made of.”
----
The People of Paper
(2005) by Salvador Plascencia
A
bit of a disclaimer, I happen to know Sal. We went to grad school together, but
I am convinced that even if I had never met him I would adore this book, because
beneath its paper cover is a magical boldness that I covet, as Sal’s people are
literally made of paper. There are bees and knees, international borders drawn
in chalk, little girls who rot their teeth eating lemons, a graveyard of
mechanical turtles, and a violent gang of carnation pickers who wage a war
against sadness and omniscient narration. If you can find the McSweeneys rectangular
edition buy it! Not only because you can stick your finger straight through the
pages in spots, but also because it conforms to the papal decree.
---
The Land of Little Rain (1903) by Mary Hunter Austin
When I came across The Land of Little Rain I
didn’t expect to like it, let alone fall madly in love with it. I mean who
picks up a book about basket makers and sheep farmers in the desert and falls
in love? But amazingly, that’s just what happened. The descriptions of
California are so vivid and so reverently environmental that you feel not only
as if you are walking Austin’s exceptionally described trails, but that you are
also a damned fool for living in a man made house and abandoning the divine
harmony of a more natural dwelling. Reading this book is like yoga without a
mat. And if that’s not a high enough endorsement, I’ll also share that I named
my firstborn child after a story in this collection. Really, I did.
---
Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book
(1990) by Maxine Hong Kingston
There’s an opening moment in Tripmaster Monkey
where the gloriously named Whittman Ah Sing contemplates suicide by jumping off
the Golden Gate Bridge. Would he jump, like the other 235 others had, facing
the land with “Coit Tower giving you the finger all the way down?” No.
“Whittman would face the sea.” In Kingston’s book, Whittman thankfully doesn’t
jump. Even though the sun setting over the ocean is tempting, Whittman never
jumps. And that’s why I like him. I first read this book in Berkeley, on a
co-operative rooftop with a view of the city –and on good days a view of the Golden
Gate Bridge—and Whitman’s dilemma became for me, a sort of party favor. I’d bring
it (and the book) with me almost everywhere and in a metaphorical game of truth
or dare I’d ask unassuming cocktail guests from which side they’d jump. Not
that I would. Not that any of us ever would. Ever. But it is such an
interesting question. A question that complicated my relationship with San
Francisco in ways even East Bay public transportation maps are still unable to
accomplish.
---
The Serial (1977) by Cyra McFadden
I honestly don’t remember how I came across this book, which isn’t a book really, but a spiral bound collection of 52 short columns exploring the marriages, child rearing tactics and label laden domestic lives of Marin’s post-hippy and pre-yuppie “flash on” culture. It is satire at its best, and best of all, McFadden never shies away from using loads of cultural jargon, consumer references and “real” places.
I honestly don’t remember how I came across this book, which isn’t a book really, but a spiral bound collection of 52 short columns exploring the marriages, child rearing tactics and label laden domestic lives of Marin’s post-hippy and pre-yuppie “flash on” culture. It is satire at its best, and best of all, McFadden never shies away from using loads of cultural jargon, consumer references and “real” places.
---
America (1956) by Allen Ginsberg
Even before I attended college at UC Berkeley I’d
make day trips to San Francisco and walk the “Beat” streets of North Beach. I’d
duck into City Lights with the earnestness of most any awkward fifteen-year-old
bookworm, and if I walked back to BART—instead of talking the bus or the
trolley—I’d have enough money to buy a single used pocket edition of a City
Lights book. I bought “America” in the early summer of my junior year in high
school. By summer’s end I had memorized all of it. Twenty years later I now
teach it to my students “every chance I get.” For me, it never gets old.
---
“In A Country” (1977) by Larry
Levis
My final selection is a single poem by Larry Levis. I chose one poem because it seemed too
gluttonous to choose all of them (although truth be told, I haven’t read a Levis I didn’t like).
One of the infamous “Fresno poets” Levis’ poetry taught me how to write, with love and fear,
about the soil of the San Joaquin and in So L.A., although the title invokes the perceived glamour of
the Southland, it’s actually equally concerned with the hardscrabble beauty of agrarian culture,
which as Michael Ventura might admit is an equally “hard, hard beauty to love.”
Thank
you so much for taking the time to learn more about the California words that
inspired me while writing So L.A.
Truly,
Bridget
Hoida
