{"id":2469,"date":"2024-12-20T09:59:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-20T17:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/magazine\/?p=2469"},"modified":"2025-01-10T11:25:03","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T19:25:03","slug":"literary-powerhouse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/magazine\/literary-powerhouse\/","title":{"rendered":"The Books That Define California"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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The Books That Define California<\/h1>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n
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\n\n \n California writers benefit by their distance \u2014 both aesthetic and geographic \u2014 from the literary centers of the east.\n\n\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n By<\/span>David L. Ulin<\/strong>\n \n December 20, 2024<\/span>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Like the United States itself,<\/strong> California owes its existence to a book. In the case of the nation, it was Thomas Paine\u2019s Common Sense<\/em>, which, appearing for the first time in January 1776, inspired Thomas Jefferson\u2019s thinking as he composed the Declaration of Independence. California\u2019s source text, on the other hand \u2014 the 1510 Spanish romance The Adventures of Esplandi\u00e1n<\/em> by Garci Rodr\u00edguez de Montalvo \u2014 has the U.S. beat by well over two centuries. \u201cKnow ye,\u201d de Montalvo writes, \u201cthat at the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California, very close to that part of the Terrestrial Paradise.\u201d Twenty-three years later, when the Spanish mutineer Fort\u00fan Xim\u00e9nez reached the southern tip of Baja, becoming the first European known to have landed on the peninsula, he chose to believe he had found this land.<\/p>\n

In that sense, California has been a literary powerhouse all along.<\/p>\n

And yet, perhaps as compelling is Xim\u00e9nez\u2019s status as an outlaw and an exile, dual roles that have also helped define the literary identity of California. I think of Joan Didion and John Steinbeck, Octavia E. Butler and Wallace Stegner, all carving their own paths through the territory. I think of the noirists (James M. Cain, Dorothy B. Hughes, Eric Knight, Chester B. Himes) and the Beats (Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Lawrence Ferlinghetti); Hollywood (Gavin Lambert, Salka Viertel, Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker) and the literature of gay liberation (John Rechy, Lillian Faderman, Gil Cuadros, Terry Wolverton). What all of them have to tell us is that the art of the word here has long carried an edge of insurrection, of restlessness and movement, a desire to strike out and seek a newer world.<\/p>\n

For contemporary writers in California, this has meant a constantly expanding heritage. We are in a never-ending state of becoming, in other words. Partly, this has to do with the dynamics of our elemental landscape, in which even the Earth itself might be said to be ongoingly in flux. Faced with such disruptions, we must check and recheck our certainties, our assumptions. We must be prepared to adjust. Do I need to say that this is a necessity for any artist? The act of writing, after all, is an act of figuring it out as one goes along. Not only that, but we remain unbound by conventional pieties or hierarchies. Why do so many California authors \u2014 among others, USC Dornsife\u2019s Percival Everett<\/a>, Maggie Nelson<\/a>, Viet Thanh Nguyen<\/a>, Robin Coste Lewis<\/a> \u2014 consistently show up on award long and short lists? Because they are not afraid to take what they need from a variety of forms, blurring boundaries between word and image, subverting genre, mixing and matching with an exhilaration born of true experimentation, which is, of course, what art requires.<\/p>\n

Such blurring, to me, has long been a defining factor in the literature of California. \u201cThere are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that,\u201d Raymond Chandler insisted in his 1944 essay \u201cThe Simple Art of Murder.\u201d What he meant is that it doesn\u2019t matter what form a piece of writing takes, just the artistry it contains. In that sense, California writers benefit by their distance \u2014 both aesthetic and geographic \u2014 from the literary centers of the east. Even now, when, with the rise of independent publishing, the hegemony of New York as a culture center has been (thankfully) disrupted, there is great value for the artist in working a bit out of the spotlight, in having the chance to experiment and try new strategies with neither expectation nor attention. It is, in fact, a necessity.<\/p>\n

\u201cKnow ye that at the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California, very close to that part of the Terrestrial Paradise.\u201d Rodr\u00edguez de Montalvo was not working from experience when he wrote that, but it resonates all the same. As to why, it\u2019s because he was working as a California writer works, following his intuition, weaving together the strands of myth and narrative \u2014 in other words, and as every one of us does, making it up as he goes along.<\/p>\n

_______<\/p>\n

David L. Ulin<\/a> is professor of the practice of English<\/a> at USC Dornsife and editor of Air\/Light<\/em><\/a>, USC\u2019s online literary journal. He is the author or editor of a dozen books including Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles<\/em>, shortlisted for the PEN\/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology<\/em>, which won a California Book Award. The former book editor and book critic of the Los Angeles Times<\/em>, he has written for The Atlantic Monthly<\/em>, Harper\u2019s<\/em>, Virginia Quarterly Review<\/em>, The Paris Review<\/em>, and The New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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\n USC Dornsife Magazine\n <\/h2>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Fall 2024 \/ Winter 2025<\/h2>\n

California<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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California writers benefit by their distance \u2014 both aesthetic and geographic \u2014 from the literary centers of the east.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":2470,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Books That Define California<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"California writers benefit by their distance \u2014 both aesthetic and geographic \u2014 from the literary centers of the east.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/magazine\/literary-powerhouse\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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