Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
By the Topic
Californians make up the largest market for books in the US, and read much
more than the national average. Skewing the curve is bookish San Francisco,
with more writers, playwrights and book purchases per capita than any other
US city. The West Coast has long attracted novelists, poets and storytellers
from across the country and around the planet, and California's multicultural
literary community today is stronger than ever.
Get a slice of the state's heartland by reading
Highway 99: A Literary Journey Through
California's Great Central Valley,
edited by Oakland-based writer Stan Yogi. It's full of multi-
cultural perspectives, from early European settlers to 20th-century Mexican and Asian im-
migrant farmers.
Early Voices of Social Realism
Arguably the most influential author to emerge from California was John Steinbeck, born in
Salinas in 1902. Steinbeck focused attention on Central Valley farming communities. Pub-
lished during the 1930s, his first California novel,
Tortilla Flat,
takes place in Monterey's
Mexican American community, while his masterpiece,
The Grapes of Wrath,
tells of the
struggles of migrant farm workers during the Depression. Another social realist, Eugene
O'Neill took his 1936 Nobel Prize money and transplanted himself near San Francisco,
where he wrote the autobiographical play
Long Day's Journey into Night
.
Beginning in the 1920s, many novelists looked at LA in political terms, often viewing it
unfavorably as the ultimate metaphor for capitalism. Classics in this vein include Upton
Sinclair's
Oil!,
a muckraking work of historical fiction with socialist overtones. Aldous
Huxley's
After Many a Summer
is based on the life of publisher William Randolph Hearst
(also an inspiration for Orson Welles' film
Citizen Kane
). F Scott Fitzgerald's final novel,
The Last Tycoon,
makes scathing observations about the early years of Hollywood by fol-
lowing the life of a 1930s movie producer who is slowly working himself to death.
In Northern California, professional hell-raiser Jack London grew up and cut his teeth in
Oakland. He turned out a massive volume of influential fiction, including tales of the
