CALIFORNIA READER
FALL 2011
CALIFORNIA READER MAGAZINE FALL 2011 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Editor’s Notes………………………………………………………………….....2 When Libraries Were a Thing of Beauty: Margaret Carnegie Library, Mills College, Oakland………………………………………………………….3 Poetry: California’s Laureates…………………………………………………..6 California Classic – Zane Grey…………………………………………………10 Events……………………………………………………………………….…….11 Author Sightings…………………………………………………………..…….12 New Reads………………………………………………………………….……14 Our Famous Ex-Californians……………………………………………….….20 California Classic – Jackson Gregory…………………………………………21 Six Scary Reads for Halloween………………………………………………..22 Kindle Affairs & Stuff………………………………..…………………….…...24 National and International Book Fairs………………………………….……26 California Classic: Bret Harte……………………………………………….…28 Editor’s Recommendations……………………………………………………29 Afterword………………………………………………………………………..32
Cover illustration: Henri Lebasque , 1865-1937) A Woman Reading
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EDITOR’S NOTES… Welcome to California Reader magazine. California Reader is a multi-format quarterly published magazine designed to be new school and old school. It is based on the style of the old school “coffetable glossy magazines” popular back in the day; not to be read at one sitting, but returned to at leisure while relaxing. It is also new school in that it is a cyber publication designed to be accessed in multiple formats. You can read it online or offline on your PC or MacIntosh computer. You can download the entire magazine as a PDF document and read it on your computer monitor or print out a hardcopy. You can also download the PDF and then – through a USB connection – simply drag and drop the magazine into your Kindle or E-Reader device. With California Reader on your Kindle, for example, it can go where you go and you can read it at the park, your local coffee shop, on your lunch break, anywhere, anytime. You can even share it with friends. If you don’t have a Kindle, you can easily transfer California Reader as a PDF to your laptop or thumbdrive and still take it with you. You can read the entire magazine at one sitting, but that’s not what’s designed for. Instead, it’s set up so that you can read a little and then return again and again for other sections and articles; so you can check back at another time for those events that you want to attend, to enjoy at your leisure. There are those who say the newspaper and magazine are a thing of the past. At California Reader, we believe these formats are simply evolving to suit the technology and schedules of the modern literate reader. For the hardcore hardcopy reader, there’s the printout; for the more mobile reader, there’s the laptop and Kindle; for the desktop fans, there’s the online version and the PC/Mac downloaded PDF. We hope you enjoy California Reader magazine. You may contact us by email at mailto:californiareadermagazine@yahoo.com Thank you for joining us. William S Dean Editor-Publisher
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When Libraries Were a Thing of Beauty: Margaret Carnegie Library
Margaret Carnegie Library, Mills College, Oakland circa 1949 The Mills College library, named in honor of Andrew Carnegie's daughter, is the only California Carnegie library designed by noted Bay Area architect Julia Morgan. The Spanish Colonial Revival building is located on the Oval near El Campanil. Andrew Carnegie funded only two academic libraries in California; the other is at Pomona College, in Claremont. Mills College received $20,000 in 1905. Two years earlier, Julia Morgan had designed the Mills oval and campanile, establishing a Mission style. Earthquakes have figured strongly in the library's history. In fact, its original dedication date had to be postponed because of the great 1906 quake which devastated San Francisco. Decades later when the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake damaged the Carnegie, the library collection had fortunately just been moved to a larger and more modern building nearby. Founded in 1852 as the Young Ladies’ Seminary in Benicia, California, Mills College has a rich Page 3
history as a leader in women’s education. Mills was founded two years after California was admitted to statehood and the same year the city of Oakland was established. Wealthy miners, farmers, and merchants wanted to further educate their daughters without sending them on the then arduous journey to the East Coast schools. First called The Young Ladies’ Seminary, Mills College for Women was established by nine citizens in what became the state capital, and it gained a strong reputation under the direction of Oberlin graduate Mary Atkins. With a vision of equal education and opportunity for women, Cyrus and Susan Mills bought the Seminary in 1865 for $5,000 and renamed it Mills College. It was moved from the original location in 1871 to the Mills135-acre oasis. At that time, Oakland had grown into a bustling West Coast city of some 10,000 residents. Mills -- chartered in 1885 -- is now the oldest women’s college west of the Rockies.
Julia Morgan (January 20, 1872 – February 2, 1957) A native daughter, born in San Francisco and raised in Oakland, Julia Morgan -- architect for the Margaret Carnegie Library -- designed over seven-hundred buildings in California. Morgan graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1894 with a degree in civil engineering. Inspired by her friend and mentor Bernard Maybeck, she headed to Paris to apply to the famous Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Denied at first because the school was not accepting women, and a second time because she failed the entrance exam, after two years she finally passed the entrance exams in the architecture program, and became the first woman to graduate with a degree in architecture from the school in Paris. Page 4
Returning to San Francisco, Morgan gained employment with architect John Galen Howard and did work on several buildings for the University of California Berkeley campus, most notably providing the decorative elements for the Hearst Mining Building, and providing designs for the Hearst Greek Theatre. In 1904, she opened her own office in San Francisco. One of her earliest works was the North Star House in Grass Valley, commissioned in 1906 by mining engineer Arthur De Wint Foote and his wife, author and illustrator, Mary Hallock Foote. For Morgan, the 1906 earthquake provided her with numerous re-building commissions, due primarily to her then rare knowledge of earthquakeresistant, reinforced concrete construction. Through her work at Berkeley, Morgan became acquainted with its patroness, Phoebe Apperson Hearst, mother of newspaper magnate, William Randolph Hearst. It was this connection which brought Morgan to her most famous architectural work – Hearst Castle beginning in 1919. Throughout a long and distinguished career, Julia Morgan left an imposing legacy of buildings in California, from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Julia Morgan is buried in the Mountain View Cemetery in the hills of Oakland which she was raised.
Governor Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Julia Morgan into the California Hall of Fame at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts, on December 15, 2008.
The Library at Hearst Castle, San Simeon
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POETRY – CALIFORNIA’S POET LAUREATES
Carol Muske-Dukes, current California Poet Laureate
An Octave Above Thunder ... reverberation Of thunder of spring over distant mountains He who was living is now dead We who were living are now dying With a little patience. --T. S. Eliot, "What the Thunder Said" She began as we huddled, six of us, in the cellar, raising her voice above those towering syllables... Never mind she cried when storm candles flickered, glass shattered upstairs. Reciting as if on horseback, she whipped the meter, trampling rhyme, reining in the reins of the air with her left hand as she stood, the washing machine behind her stunned on its haunches, not spinning. She spun the lines around each other, her gaze fixed. I knew she'd silenced Page 6
a cacophony of distractions in her head, to summon what she owned, rote-bright: Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit... of the flower in a crannied wall and one clear call... for the child who'd risen before school assemblies: eerie Dakota rumble that rolled yet never brought rain breaking over the podium. Her voice rose, an octave above thunder: When I consider how my light is spent-I thought of her light, poured willy-nilly. in this dark world and wide: half-blind, blind, a widening distraction Getting and spending we lay waste our powers...Different poem, a trick! Her eyes singled me out as the wind slowed. Then, reflective, I'd rather be / a Pagan sucked in a creed outworn / than a dullard with nothing by heart. It was midsummer, Minnesota. In the sky, the Blind Poet blew sideways, his cape spilling rain. They also serve! she sang, hailing closure as I stopped hearing her. I did not want to stand and wait. I loathed nothing so much as the forbearance now in her voice, insisting that Beauty was at hand, but not credible. I considered how we twisted into ourselves to live. When the storm stopped, I sat still, listening. Here were the words of the Blind Poet— Page 7
crumpled like wash for the line, to be dried, pressed flat. Upstairs, someone called my name. What sense would it ever make to them, the unread world, the getters and spenders, if they could not hear what I heard, not feel what I felt nothing ruined poetry, a voice revived it, extremity. INA D. COOLBRITH – CALIFORNIA’S FIRST POET LAUREATE Born Josephine Donna Smith, oldest daughter of Don Carlos and Agnes Coolbrith Smith, in Nauvoo, Illinois, March 10, 1842, she entered California through the Beckwourth Pass in a covered wagon train in 1852. Her first poems were published in the Los Angeles Times in 1854. After a brief and tragic marriage at 17, and the death of her child, she moved to San Francisco in 1862 adopting a new name Ina and her mother’s maiden surname Coolbrith. Arriving with a reputation as a poet, she soon began writing for The Golden Era and The Californian, forming intimate friendships with Bret Harte, Charles Warren Stoddard, and Mark Twain, among others. She worked as a journalist on the Overland Monthly. Later she was librarian of the Mechanics Institute Library and the Bohemian Club library, and was the first librarian of the Oakland Public Library. She lost her San Francisco home and all her possessions in the earthquake and fire of 1906. Through the generosity of the best known California writers of the day, another home was built on Russian Hill, where she lived until the infirmities of age forced her to share the home of her niece in Berkeley until her death in 1923. Bohemia No lurking shadows here appear; The weaving spider comes not here; Here, if the solemn Owl doth sit, ‘Tis but above the tapers lit, To blink at wisdom’s shinning wit. The skies are blue, the winds are fair, Nor place nor space for tyrant care Page 8
Within the bounds, Bohemia. Lo! gold is much, but ‘tis not allToo oft a lure the soul to thrall; The subtle brain, the skilled hand, Of melody the magic wand, The silent songs the poets sing, Which through the world take voice and wing, The sparkling jest, the laughing lip, The royal, genial fellowshipOf these thy wealth, Bohemia. O children of the Cloudless Clime! Where’er the changing sands of time Have borne ye, lo! from one and all The voices answer, voices call! From Seen, and from the Unseen Land, Where, unforgot, dear comrades stand, Lift loyal heart and loyal hand, With love of thee, Bohemia. * Written for the Bohemian Club, 1893.
BEYOND BAROQUE 681 Venice Blvd, Venice (in the former City Hall) Beyond Baroque is one of the United States' leading independent Literary/Arts Centers and public spaces dedicated to literary and cultural production, contact, interaction, and community building. Founded in 1968, it is based in the Old Town Hall in Venice, California, near the Pacific Ocean. It offers a program of readings, new music, free workshops, publishing, bookstore, archiving, and education. (SEE EVENTS)
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CALIFORNIA CLASSIC – ZANE GREY From Call of the Canyon Spring might have been fresh and keen in the air, but it had not yet brought much green to the brown earth or to the trees. The cottonwoods showed a light feathery verdure. The long grass was a bleached white, and low down close to the sod fresh tiny green blades showed. The great fern leaves were sear and ragged, and they rustled in the breeze. Small gray sheath-barked trees with clumpy foliage and snags of dead branches, Glenn called cedars; and, grotesque as these were, Carley rather liked them. They were approachable, not majestic and lofty like the pines, and they smelled sweetly wild, and best of all they afforded some protection from the bitter wind. Carley rested better than she walked. The huge sections of red rock that had tumbled from above also interested Carley, especially when the sun happened to come out for a few moments and brought out their color. She enjoyed walking on the fallen pines, with Glenn below, keeping pace with her and holding her hand. Carley looked in vain for flowers and birds. The only living things she saw were rainbow trout that Glenn pointed out to her in the beautiful clear pools. The way the great gray boulders trooped down to the brook as if they were cattle going to drink; the dark caverns under the shelving cliffs, where the water murmured with such hollow mockery; the low spear-pointed gray plants, resembling century plants, and which Glenn called mescal cactus, each with its single straight dead stalk standing on high with fluted head; the narrow gorges, perpendicularly walled in red, where the constricted brook plunged in amber and white cascades over fall after fall, tumbling, rushing, singing its water melody—these all held singular appeal for Carley as aspects of the wild land, fascinating for the moment, symbolic of the lonely red man and his forbears, and by their raw contrast making more necessary and desirable and elevating the comforts and conventions of civilization.
Zane Grey Estate, 396 E. Mariposa Street, Altadena Page 10
EVENTS October 22
The Southern California Independent Booksellers Association's SCIBA Authors Feast and Trade Show. Long Beach, Calif. This year's authors feast and trade show will be held at the Hilton Long Beach Hotel and will include, for the first time, a dessert and authors reception after the authors feast.
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The Northern California Independent Booksellers Association's NCIBA Trade Show. Oakland, Calif. This year's show will be held at the Oakland Convention Center/City Center Marriott.
November 1
Tuesday 7:00 PM Night and the City - L.A. Noir in Poetry, Fiction and Film: Noir Genius: Weldon Kees and Jorge Luis Borge Presented by the Los Angeles Poetry Festival and Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center. With Jamie Fitzgerald, Dana Gioia, Lou Matthews, Robert Mezey, and Mariano Zaro. **NOTE: This event will be held at Libros Schmibros Used Bookshop and Lending Library • 2000 East 1st Street in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles. Call (323) 302-9408 for more information. FREE admission
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Saturday 4:00 PM Night and the City - L.A. Noir in Poetry, Fiction and Film:: Killer Verse: Poems of Murder and Mayhem West Coast debut of new Everyman’s Library poetry anthology from Knopf. Presented by the Los Angeles Poetry Festival and Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center. 681 Venice Blvd Venice, Killer Verse: Poems of Murder and Mayhem, is a spine-tingling collection of terrifically creepy poems about the deadly art of murder. The villains and victims who populate these pages range from Cain and Abel and Bluebeard and his wives to Lizzie Borden, Jack the Ripper, and Mafia hit men. The literary forms they inhabit are just as varied, from the colorful melodramas of old Scottish ballads to the hardboiled poetry of twentieth-century noir, from lighthearted comic riffs to profound poetic musings on murder. Suzanne Lummis, Charles Harper Webb,, and Kurt Brown will present work by Robert Browning, Thomas Hardy, W. H. Auden, Stevie Smith, Mark Doty, Frank Bidart, Toi Derricotte, Lynn Emanuel, Tony Barnstone, and Page 11
Cornelius Eady, which are only a few of the many poets, old and new, whose work is captured in this heart-stopping—and criminally entertaining—collection. Special admission policy: Free for members, $8 for non-members, and $5 for students 11-14 2011 California Library Association and California School Library Association Annual Conference & Exposition. Pasadena Convention Center, Pasadena
AUTHOR SIGHTINGS October 13
Justin Torres signing We the Animals, Alexander Book Co 50 2nd Street. San Francisco
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Robert Kipniss signs Robert Kipniss: A Working Artist’s Life, Weinstein Gallery, 383 Geary Street. San Francisco
November 5
Luis J. Rodrigue book signing for "It Calls You Back" 4 to 6 pm Libreria Martinez, 216 North Broadway, Santa Ana Scott Pasfield signing Gay in America, 4:00 PM, The Grove at Farmers Market, 189 Grove Drive Suite K 30, Los Angeles
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Catherine Coulter, Authors' talk and book signing, Solano County Library Foundation Authors Luncheon. 10:30am to 3pm The Clubhouse at Rancho Solano, Fairfield
Julie Newmar, Catwoman on "Batman", signing copies of The Conscious Catwoman Explains Life on Earth 5:00 PM at Vroman's Bookstore - East Colorado Blvd. Pasadena.
Gregory Maguire signing Out of Oz, , Booksmith 1644 Haight Street, San Francisco,
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Gregory Maguire, signing Out of Oz, Barnes and Noble, The Grove, 401 Newport Center Fashion Island Mall Newport Beach
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Alison Arngrim, star of "Little House on the Prairie", signing copies of Confessions of a Prairie Bitch at the Santa Monica Public Library - Santa Monica Blvd. Santa Monica.
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Bill Maher, comedian and talk show host, signing copies of The New New Rules 7:00 PM at Barnes & Noble - Grove Drive. Los Angeles
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Catherine C. Robbins All Indians Do Not Live in Teepees (or Casinos) 1:30 PM San Diego Independent Scholars University of California San Diego Chancellor's Complex Room 111A La Jolla.
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Michael Connelly signs The Drop, 700 PM, The Grove at Farmers Market 189 Grove Drive Suite K 30, Los Angeles
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Gisela Rahmeyer signing Surviving on Dreams Mrs. Figs Bookworm, 93 East Daily Drive, Camarillo.
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Hillary Duff signing Elixir, Borders, 100 S. Brand Blvd., Glendale Max and Linda Ciampoli authors of Churchill’s Secret Agent Jewish Federation of the Greater San Gabriel & Pomona Valleys Beth Shalom of Whittier 14564 Hawes Street, Whittier. Brunch: 10 a.m./Presentation at 10:30 a.m.
Hilary Duff book signing
Michael Connelly book signing
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NEW READS The California Trail Ralph Compton’s first novel in the Trail Drive series, The Goodnight Trail, was a finalist for the Western Writers of America Medicine Pipe Bearer Award for best debut novel. He was also the author of the Sundown Rider series and the Border Empire series. A native of St. Clair County, Alabama, Compton worked as a musician, a radio announcer, a songwriter, and a newspaper columnist before turning to writing westerns. He died in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1998. Excerpt from The California Trail: “The problem does not lie in California, or at the end of any trail, but within Gil himself. Can you not see what is happening between him and Rosa?” He kicked his chair back and got up, his palms flat on the table, just looking at her. His nostrils flared and his brown eyes had gone cold. “Rosa can’t be more than twelve,” he said. “Thirteen at the most. Are you sayin’ that Gil—” “I did not accuse Gil of anything,” she said. “While you think of Rosa as a child, she thinks of herself as a woman, and it is in that light that I see her. So does Dorinda. Rosa has the resources and the yearnings of a woman. A child of twelve, perhaps thirteen? I think not.” He sat down, allowing his temper to subside before he spoke. “So the trail drive to the goldfields ain’t just the money,” he said. “Gil’s leavin’ a situation here that he ain’t sure he can handle. But a man can’t run forever. What’s going to keep this thing from gettin’ back in the saddle and sinkin’ the gut hooks in him again, when he returns?” “A wife perhaps,” said Angelina. MINING CALIFORNIA Andrew C. Isenberg Andrew C. Isenberg is a professor of history at Temple University. He is the author of The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750– 1920 and is a former fellow of the Huntington Library and the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies. Between 1849 and 1874 almost $1 billion in gold was mined in California. With little available capital or labor, here’s how: high-pressure water cannons washed hillsides into sluices that used mercury to trap gold but Page 14
let the soil wash away; eventually more than three times the amount of earth moved to make way for the Panama Canal entered California’s rivers, leaving behind twenty tons of mercury every mile—rivers overflowed their banks and valleys were flooded, the land poisoned. In the rush to wealth, the same chain of foreseeable consequences reduced California’s forests and grasslands. Not since William Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis has a historian so skillfully applied John Muir’s insight—“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe”—to the telling of the history of the American West.
Rebels in Paradise The Los Angeles Art Scene and the 1960s Hunter Drohojowska-Philp Los Angeles, 1960: There was no modern art museum and there were few galleries, which is exactly what a number of daring young artists liked about it, among them Ed Ruscha, David Hockney, Robert Irwin, Bruce Nauman, Judy Chicago and John Baldessari. Freedom from an established way of seeing, making, and marketing art fueled their creativity, which in turn inspired the city. Today Los Angeles has four museums dedicated to contemporary art, around one hundred galleries, and thousands of artists. Here, at last, is the book that tells the saga of how the scene came into being, why a prevailing Los Angeles permissiveness, 1960s-style, spawned countless innovations, including Andy Warhol's first exhibition, Marcel Duchamp's first retrospective, Frank Gehry's mind-bending architecture, Rudi Gernreich's topless bathing suit, Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider, even the Beach Boys, the Byrds, the Doors, and other purveyors of a California style.
Love & War in California Oakley Hall The award-winning author Oakley Hall begins his newest work in 1940s San Diego, where his endearing, wide-eyed narrator must define his identity in terms of self, family, and World War II. As his classmates disappear into the war one by one, he becomes obsessed with abuses of power and embroiled with the charming, dangerous Errol Flynn; with the Red Baiting of the American Legion; with the House Un-American Activities Committee; and with the Japanese interment at Manzanar. Nevertheless, Payton, too, must go to the war, where he is a part of the invasion of Europe and that proving of the American soldier: the Battle of the Bulge. After war’s end and time in New York, he returns to California as a writer and a seeker, whose old, long-lost love rises from the ashes to show him who he really is. Page 15
Excerpt from Love & War in California: “Bonny lived in Mission Hills, not far from where I had lived before the Depression, in a white stucco and red tile Spanish-style house like my family’s onetime house, but two stories. Inside were the thick, arched doorways out of my memory, the tan walls with broad plasterer’s swirls. Bonny showed me into the living room, where Dr. Bonington sat by the fireplace with a kerosene heater and the shucked peels of an orange in an ashtray on the taboret beside his chair. He got up to shake my hand, a tall man with round shoulders. “This is Payton Daltrey, Daddy,” Bonny said. She wore a white formal, and she’d pinned the gardenia I’d brought into her hair.
Towers of Gold How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California Frances Dinkelspiel Isaias Hellman, a Jewish immigrant, arrived in California in 1859 with very little money in his pocket and his brother Herman by his side. By the time he died, he had effectively transformed Los Angeles into a modern metropolis. In Frances Dinkelspiel's groundbreaking history, the early days of California are seen through the life of a man who started out as a simple store owner to become California's premier money-man of the late 19th and early 20th century. Growing up as a young immigrant, Hellman learned the use of "capital, founding LA's Farmers and Merchants Bank and transforming Wells Fargo into one of the West's biggest financial institutions. He invested money with Henry Huntington to build trolley lines, lent Edward Doheney the funds that led him to discover California's huge oil reserves, and assisted Harrison Gary Otis in buying the Los Angeles Times. Hellman led the building of Los Angeles' first synagogue, the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, helped start the University of Southern California and served as Regent of the University of California. His influence, however, was not limited to Los Angeles. After San Francisco's devastating 1906 earthquake and fire, he calmed the financial markets there in order to help that great city rise from the ashes. Francis Dinkelspiel is an award-winning journalist and the great-great granddaughter of Isaias Hellman.
Sketch of Hellman store
Isaias Hellman Page 16
Laurel Canyon The Inside Story of Rock-and-Roll's Legendary Neighborhood Michael Walker In the late sixties and early seventies, an impromptu collection of musicians colonized a eucalyptus-scented canyon deep in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles and melded folk, rock, and savvy American pop into a sound that conquered the world as thoroughly as the songs of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones had before them. During the canyon’s golden era, the musicians who lived and worked there scored dozens of landmark hits, from "California Dreamin’" to "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" selling tens of millions of records and resetting the thermostat of pop culture. In Laurel Canyon, veteran journalist Michael Walker tells the inside story of this unprecedented gathering of some of the baby boom’s leading musical lights—including Joni Mitchell; Jim Morrison; Crosby, Stills, and Nash; John Mayall; the Mamas and the Papas; Carole King; the Eagles; and Frank Zappa, to name just a few—who turned Los Angeles into the music capital of the world.
Pacific Coast Highway Traveler's Guide Tom Snyder Before gridlocked freeways and jumbo jets, the West Coast was a region of friendly towns and secluded coves, with 1,800 miles of winding and scenic roadway. Join Tom Snyder for another two-land adventure--from California's strands and the tumbled shoreline of Oregon, through Washington's lush rain forests. Detailed directions make traveling either up or down the coast easy. Explore more than 390 special places, like Port Townsend, where Snow Falling on Cedars and An Officer and a Gentleman were filmed. Discover over 100 restaurants and romantic hideaways, from pizza parlors to a cozy inn with a wine list of 2,000 vintages. Find near-secret beaches, where you can still park free right along the old highway and wade straight into the ocean.
Thelma Todd’s Café, Pacific Coast Highway, c. 1934 Page 17
John Muir Magnificent Tramp - American Heroes (Volume 4 of 6) Rod Miller An important protector of the American wilderness, John Muir emigrated from Scotland to the United States in 1849 and became a widely sought expert in botany, glaciers, and forestry. He also gained renown during his life as an explorer, naturalist, and conservationist. He is best known for his long association with the Yosemite Valley and Sierra Nevada Mountains of California.
Constantly at odds with powerful political and financial interests, he was instrumental in creating federal protection for forests as well as the establishment and expansion of national parks. The wars he waged are still being fought and the threats to the environment he encountered are as real today as they were in his time. Muir’s ideas are still relevant to the lives of Americans. Muir is remembered as the founder of the Sierra Club and the father of America’s conservation movement.
John Muir Lodge, 86728 California 180, Miramonte
The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel Héctor Tobar With The Barbarian Nurseries, Héctor Tobar gives our most misunderstood metropolis its great contemporary novel, taking us beyond the glimmer of Hollywood and deeper than camera-ready crime stories to reveal Southern California life as it really is, across its vast, sunshiny sprawl of classes, languages, dreams, and ambitions. Araceli is the live-in maid in the Torres-Thompson household—one of three Mexican employees in a Spanish-style house with lovely views of the Pacific. She has been responsible strictly for the cooking and cleaning, but Page 18
the recession has hit, and suddenly Araceli is the last Mexican standing—unless you count Scott Torres, though you’d never suspect he was half Mexican but for his last name and an old family photo with central L.A. in the background. The financial pressure is causing the kind of fights that even Araceli knows the children shouldn’t hear, and then one morning, Araceli wakes to an empty house—except for the two Torres-Thompson boys, little aliens she’s never had to interact with before. Their parents are unreachable, and the only family member she knows of is Señor Torres, the subject of that old family photo. So she does the only thing she can think of and heads to the bus stop to seek out their grandfather. With a precise eye for telling details and an charming blend of characters, Tobar calls on his experience—as a novelist, a father, a journalist, a son of Guatemalan immigrants, and a native Angeleno—to deliver a novel as alive as the city itself. Excerpt: Neither of her bosses informed Araceli beforehand of the momentous news that she would be the last Mexican working in this house. Araceli had two bosses, whose surnames were hyphenated into an odd, bilingual concoction: Torres-Thompson. Oddly, la señora Maureen never called herself "Mrs. Torres," though she and el señor Scott were indeed married, as Araceli had discerned on her first day on the job from the wedding pictures in the living room and the identical gold bands on their fingers. Araceli was not one to ask questions, or to allow herself to be pulled into conversation or small talk, and her dialogues with her jefes were often austere affairs dominated by the monosyllabic "Yes," "Sí," and, occasionally, "No." She lived in their home twelve days out of every fourteen, but was often in the dark when new chapters opened in the Torres-Thompson family saga: for example, Maureen's pregnancy with the couple's third child, which Araceli found out about only because of her jefa's repeated vomiting one afternoon. "Señora, you are sick. I think my enchiladas verdes are too strong for you. ¿Qué no?" "No, Araceli. It's not the green sauce. I'm going to have a baby. Didn't you know?"
Snitch Jacket Christopher Goffard Christopher Goffard is an author and a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times. A Los Angeles native with an English degree from Cornell University, he started at The St. Petersburg Times in 1998, where he covered cops, city hall, and courts. His work on the Tampa courts beat gave rise to "The $40 Lawyer," which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing. Since January 2006, he has been a general assignment reporter at the LA Times, writing about everything from border warriors and prison gangs to the legacy of Watergate. He was part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting team that chronicled the Bell scandal in 2010, Page 19
coverage which also won the newspaper a George Polk Award for local reporting, the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting, and the American Society of News Editors Distinguished Writing Award for Local Accountability Reporting. His first book, a literary crime novel called Snitch Jacket, was published by Random House in the United Kingdom and by Rookery Press in the United States. It was a finalist for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel in 2008, has been translated into Italian, French and Norwegian, and is being developed as a film.
OUR FAMOUS EX-CALIFORNIANS Because they are better known as resident writers in other places, it’s not surprising that few people are aware that this famous poet is a native son or that these authors lived here for over a decade. Did you know? Robert Frost, poet. Born in San Francisco, March 26, 1874. Frost was eleven years old, when, after the death of his newspaperman father on May 5, 1885 his mother moved the remaining family back East to Lawrence, Massachusetts to live with his paternal grandfather.
Gertrude Stein, poet, writer, patroness of the Arts. Born in Pennsylvania, February 3, 1874. When Gertrude was three years old, the Steins relocated for business reasons to Vienna and then Paris. They returned to America in 1878, settling in Oakland, California, where Stein attended First Hebrew Congregation of Oakland's Sabbath school. Stein was seventeen years old when she left Oakland to live in Baltimore with her mother’s family, following the death of her parents. Eugene O’Neill, playwright. Born in New York City, and strongly associated with the Greenwich Village crowd, and later with the Provincetown Players in Massachusetts, nevertheless, O’Neill and his second wife, Carlotta Monterrey, lived many years at their reclusive Tao House, In Danville, California. Later, in 1944, In 1944, he and Carlotta moved into a suite of rooms in the Huntington Hotel on San Francisco's Nob Hill. Page 20
Wallace Stegner, author. Iowa, Saskatchewan, Vermont, and Utah all claim to be Stegner’s geographical Muse. Throughout the years of WW II, he taught at Harvard and produced four novels, including Big Rock Candy Mountain (1943). In 1945, he was offered the directorship of the writing program at Stanford University in Palo Alto, a position he held for the next twenty-five years.
CALIFORNIA CLASSIC – JACKSON GREGORY From The Everlasting Whisper, a tale of the California Wilderness A long time King stood at the mouth of the cave, looking forth upon the newly whitened world. The look of the thickening sky, the wintry sting of the rushing air, the businesslike way in which the snow swirled and fell created a condition upon which he had not counted and for which he had no relish. This was more like a midwinter blizzard than any storm had any business being so early in the season. For many hours already the snow had been falling, piling up in the mountain passes; if it kept on at this rate through another day and night-well, he and Gloria had best be getting out without any loitering. He looked at his watch; not yet eleven o’clock. Need for haste; the day would be short. Before darkness shut down he had half a dozen hours, hours for methodical search. Here was one of Gus Ingle’s caves; another, he knew, was directly below and at the base of the cliffs; the third should be near. It was the third that he was chiefly interested in. He recalled the words in the old Bible: “We come to the First Caive and then we come to Caive number three and two!” There lay significance in the order of Ingle’s numerals; first, three, and two. Two of the caves were for any one to see; before now King had been in both of them. Hence it must be that Gus Ingle’s treasure lay in the third. That one King must locate. And without too much delay… Taking his rope with him King made what haste he could going down the cliffs. The sides of the ravine were littered with dead wood, drift and limbs that had broken off the few battered trees above. He gathered as heavy a load of dry branches as he could handle, bound them about with his rope, and, fighting his way all the way up, clambered again to the upper cave…He moved about her, went a dozen paces deeper into the great cavern, and threw down his wood. Breaking branches into short lengths he quickly got a fire going. The flames spurted up eagerly, bright and cheery, and threw dancing light among the wavering shadows. He brought the bedding-roll closer and opened it into a rough-and-ready bed. Page 21
SIX SCARY READS FOR HALLOWEEN Carrion Comfort Dan Simmons Carrion Comfort is a good, richly-developed tale of three old friends with grotesque and far-reaching powers. But friendship only goes so far…then friends become dreadful enemies who pull in others as their minions to continue a rivalry that reaches beyond the grave. It is a story of a kind of immortality achieved by psychic vampires, of mind control, of murder. And the constant struggle of the living to defeat these more-then-human monsters. Some will be sacrificed, but will others succeed in the end? And what will be the cost? Their sanity? Their humanity? Settle in on these chill Fall nights with a read that will won’t warm your blood but will keep your mind racing to the next page. The Damnation Game Clive Barker This is vintage Clive Barker. The writing is crisp and colorful with grisly details that send those shivers down your back and scenes that make you shudder. Barker’s unlikely characters pull you in to a tale that is classic in its horror and yet unique in both setting and style. Starting in World War II with a gamble, the story unfolds in surprising ways. The moody ambience set in current life is all the more impressive by the mundane background of city life and what lurks deep within its shadows. Do you dare play The Game when more than life is at stake? Do you have a choice?
They Thirst Robert R. McCammon If you’re a bit weary of the “sparkling” vampires and the sex-driven creatures of True Blood, take a walk on the really wild side with Robert M. McCammon’s classic They Thirst. These are vampires who serve The Great Plan. Imagine Los Angeles filled with vampires, from the Hollywood hills to the 401 freeway. Coffin-manufacturing vampires, biker gang vampires, illegal immigrant vampires, and all serving the evil designs of a “something else” that resides in the old mansion of a one-time horror film star. You’ll never look at Los Angeles in the same way once you read this book. Page 22
Master of Lies Graham Masterton From the terrifyingly gruesome opening scene to the satisfying conclusion, Master of Lies will keep your mind humming and your blood running cold. A follow-up to Masterton’s horrifying novel The Manitou, Master of Lies takes you on an increasingly bizarre journey into hellish happenings that cause you wonder, “Will it ever be normal again?”
Necroscope Brian Lumley What if you were the only living person in the world that could communicate with the dead as easily as turning on your cellphone? What if it included the Undead? What if you were recruited by British Intelligence to be a kind of James Bond for the supernatural? What if an author – Brian Lumley, let’s say – was able to weave all these “What ifs” into a masterful tale of creepy action and horror goings-on? Read the novel and see for yourself – preferably on a moonless night just before Halloween.
Flicker Theodore Roszak On the surface, Flicker almost doesn’t seem like a terrifying novel – at first. But the deeper you probe into its complex plot, the more you begin to realize you’re slowly becoming mired in events that have such wide and deep-ranging effects that you’ll be very wary of watching films or television ever again. Who’s behind the screen and what are they making you do, how are they making you live, what fears and chaos are they spreading…and why?
BONUS READ Moon Dance S. P. Somtow Did a ragtag group of European werewolves immigrate to the American West? When Carrie Dupré travels to the remote town of Winter Eyes to study a famed psychopath, she uncovers a dark history of violence, culture wars . . . and werewolves. Moon Dance is a tale of horror and the supernatural alternating between the present of the 1960's and the Old West of the 1880's that explores the complexities of animal instinct, multiple personality disorder, sexual dominance and the nature of evil. Page 23
KINDLE AFFAIRS & STUFF… More and more e-readers are becoming the wedge driving up author popularity. What’s topping the buyer charts for Kindle readers? Are you in the loop or still dragging your techno-feet? The Mill River Recluse. Darcie Chan. A story of triumph over tragedy, one that reminds us of the value of friendship and the ability of love to come from the most unexpected of places. The Affair, Lee Child. A novel of unrelenting suspense that could only come from the pen of #1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Child, The Affair is the start of the Jack Reacher saga, a thriller that takes Reacher—and his readers—right to the edge: a lonely railroad track. A crime scene. A coverup. . . . and beyond. The Abbey, Chris Culver. Ash Rashid is a former homicide detective who can't stand the thought of handling another death investigation. In another year, he'll be out of the department completely. That's the plan, at least, until his niece's body is found in the guest home of one of his city's most wealthy citizens. The coroner calls it an overdose, but the case doesn't add up. Against orders, Ash launches an investigation to find his niece's murderer. The Help, Kathryn Stockett. A young white woman in the early 1960s in Mississippi becomes interested in the plight of the black ladies' maids that every family has working for them. She writes their stories about mistreatment, abuse and heartbreaks of working in white families' homes, just before the Civil Rights revolution. The Hangman's Daughter, Oliver Pötzsch, Lee Chadeayne. Brilliantly-researched and exciting story of a formative era of history when witches were hunted and the inquisitors had little belief in their methods beyond their effect in pacifying superstitious townspeople . Pötzsch, actually descended from a line of hangmen, delivers a fantastically fast-paced read, rife with details on the social and power structures in the town as well as dichotomy between university medicine and traditional remedies. The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins. In a not-too-distant future, the United States of America has collapsed, weakened by drought, fire, famine, and war, to be replaced by Panem, a country divided into the Capitol and 12 districts. Each year, two young representatives from each district are selected by lottery to participate in The Hunger Games. Part entertainment, part brutal intimidation of the subjugated districts, the televised games are broadcasted throughout Panem as the 24 participants are forced to eliminate their competitors, literally, with all citizens required to watch. What’s on your Kindle? Page 24
Do you sometimes enjoy reading the classics of literature and non-fiction, maybe even sometimes the somewhat obscure? Not everything turns up on amazon.com. You may not yet have noticed but Project Gutenberg and, of course, GoogleBooks now have many books available for your Kindle, too. Got the NOOK? Our friends over at GoodReads have a listing of new October releases for NOOK readers. You can read Kindle books on your Kindle, Kindle DX, PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod and BlackBerry. Whispersync technology syncs your last page read, notes, bookmarks, and highlights across devices, so you can pick up where you left off across devices. Want to get your geek-tech e-reader groove on? Check out these links for newly-released information about the technology that is powering your reads: E-Ink Digital Book World The Publishing Community for the 21st Century ePublishing HQ Publishers Weekly Online Book Business Online Publishing Trends Online
NEWS SNIPPET – Springer Science+Business Media has started its extensive digitization project, Springer Book Archives (SBA). The archive will include nearly all books that have been published since the 1840s. Tthe book archives will contain around 65,000 titles, including unique works by Albert Einstein , Niels Bohr , Sir John Eccles , Lise Meitner , Werner Siemens and Rudolf Diesel. The works in the digital archives will be available on the company’s platform. When this mammoth project is completed at the end of 2012, Springer will be able to offer more than 100,000 e-Books on springerlink.com
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NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL BOOK FAIRS 2011 – 2012 Frankfurt Book Fair, Frankfurt, Germany 12 - 16 October 2011 Istanbul Book Fair, Istanbul, Turkey 12 - 20 November 2011 Sharjah International Book Fair, Sharjah, UAE 16 - 26 November 2011 www.sharjahbookfair.com Guadalajara Book Fair, Guadalajara, Mexico 26 November - 4 December 2011 Taipei International Book Exhibition (TIBE), Taipei, Taiwan 1 - 6 February 2012 www.tibe.org.tw Vilnius International Book Fair / Baltic Book Fair, Vilnius, Lithuania 23 - 26 February 2012 New Delhi World Book Fair, New Delhi, India 25 February - 4 March 2012 Jerusalem International Book Fair, Jerusalem, Israel February 2012 Dublin Book Festival, Dublin, Ireland March 2012 Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, Abu Dhabi, UAE 20 - 25 March 2012 Paris Book Fair, Paris, France 16 - 19 March 2012 Bangkok International Book Fair, Bangkok, Thailand 29 March - 8 April 2012 Page 26
Bologna Children's Book Fair, Bologna, Italy 27 - 30 March 2012 London Book Fair, London, UK 16 - 18 April 2012 Budapest International Book Festival, Budapest, Hungary 19 - 22 April 2012 Buenos Aires Book Fair, Buenos Aires, Argentina 17 April - 7 May 2012 Thessaloniki Book Fair, Thessaloniki, Greece April 2012 Geneva Book Fair, Geneva, Switzerland 25 - 29 April 2012 Bogota International Book Fair, Bogota, Colombia 18 April - 1 May 2012 Prague International Book Fair, Prague, Czech Republic 17 - 20 May 2012 Warsaw International Book Fair, Warsaw, Poland 10 - 13 May 2012 BookExpo America, New York City, USA 5 - 7 June 2012 Seoul International Book Fair, Seoul, Korea 20 - 24 June 2012 Tokyo International Book Fair, Tokyo, Japan 5 -8 July 2012 Beijing International Book Fair, Beijing, China 29 August - 2 September 2012 Rio de Janeiro International Book Fair, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil September 2012 Page 27
Moscow International Book Fair, Moscow, Russia September 2012 Colombo International Book Fair, Colombo, Sri Lanka September 2012 Nairobi International Book Fair, Nairobi, Kenya October 2012 Goteborg Book Fair, Goteborg, Sweden September 2012 Frankfurt Book Fair, Frankfurt, Germany 10 - 14 October 2012
CALIFORNIA CLASSIC: BRET HARTE From A Widow of the Santa Ana Valley A long volleying shower had just passed down the level landscape, and was followed by a rolling mist from the warm saturated soil like the smoke of the discharge. Through it she could see a faint lightening of the hidden sun, again darkening through a sudden onset of rain, and changing as with her conflicting doubts and resolutions. Thus gazing, she was vaguely conscious of an addition to the landscape in the shape of a man who was passing down the road with a pack on his back like the tramping "prospectors" she had often seen at Heavy Tree Hill. That memory apparently settled her vacillating mind; she determined she would NOT go to the dance. But as she was turning away from the window a second figure, a horseman, appeared in another direction by a cross-road, a shorter cut through her domain. This she had no difficulty in recognizing as one of the strangers who were getting up the dance. She had noticed him at church on the previous Sunday. As he passed the house he appeared to be gazing at it so earnestly that she drew back from the window lest she should be seen. And then, for no reason whatever, she changed her mind once more, and resolved to go to the dance. Gravely announcing this fact to the wife of her superintendent who kept house with her in her loneliness, she thought nothing more about it. She should go in her mourning, with perhaps the addition of a white collar and frill. His first literary efforts, including poetry and prose, appeared in The Californian, an early literary journal edited by Charles Henry Webb. In 1868 he became editor of The Overland Monthly, another new literary magazine, but this one more in tune with the pioneering spirit of excitement in California. His story, "The Luck of Roaring Camp", appeared in the magazine's second issue, propelling Harte to nationwide fame. Page 28
EDITOR’S RECOMMENDATIONS Black California: A Literary Anthology Edited by Aparajita Nanda 150 years of the California African American experience Black California is the first comprehensive anthology celebrating black writing through almost two centuries of Californian history. In a patchwork quilt pieced from poetry, fiction, essays, drama, and memoirs, this anthology traces the trajectory of African American writers. Each piece gives a voice to the resonating rhythms that created the African American literary tradition in California. These voices speak of dreams and disasters, of heroic achievements and tragic failures, of freedom and betrayal, of racial discrimination and subsequent restoration—all setting the pulse of the black California experience. Early works include a letter written by Pio Pico, the last Mexican governor of California; an excerpt from mountain man, freed slave, and honorary Crow Indian James Beckwourth; and a poem written by James Madison Bell and recited to a public gathering of black people commemorating the death of President Lincoln. More recent contributions include pieces from beat poet Bob Kaufman, Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver, comedian Brian Copeland, and feminists Lucille Clifton and June Jordan. Califauna: A Literary Field Guide Edited by Terry Beers and Emily Elrod From Native American tales and explorers’ accounts to fiction and poetry by established and emerging writers, this new anthology is an exploration of how animals inspire our imagination and move our compassion. Every piece is written of a different animal, complete with editor field notes. The book also includes a collection of artwork and a timeline of animal-related milestones in California. Califauna includes literature by: Mary Austin, Ambrose Bierce, T. C. Boyle, Charles Bukowski, Walter Van Tilburg Clark, Robert Hass, Helen Hunt Jackson, Robinson Jeffers, Ursula K. Le Guin, Jack London, Barry Lopez, David Mas Masumoto, John Muir, Ishmael Reed, John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, and others. New California Writing 2011 Edited by Gayle Wattawa Every piece in New California Writing 2011 was selected to engage and challenge the reader–to move beyond the stale repetition of the daily news into the realm of literature that can ignite the imagination and enlarge the vision. Included among the contributors are well-known writers such as Rebecca Solnit, Mark Arax, Susan Straight, Mike Davis, William T. Vollmann, and Michael Chabon as well as emerging voices. Page 29
No Rooms of Their Own: Women Writers of Early California, 1849-1869 Edited by Ida Rae Egli First published by Heyday Books in 1992 and now reissued under our California Legacy series, No Rooms of Their Own has become a standard reference and a starting point for many studies. More importantly, it remains one of the few anthologies in which the scope and range of authentic literary voices of the women of the gold rush era can be heard. This collection—now repackaged for a contemporary audience—pays homage to the talent and experiences of these women who built the West.
Under the Fifth Sun: Latino Literature from California Edited by Rick Heide A celebration, an outcry, a revelation, and a powerful reading experience, this anthology ranges from naturalism to magical realism, from lyric poetry to detective fiction, with works by Francisco X. Alarcón, Isabel Allende, Lorna Dee Cervantes, César Chávez, Francisco Jiménez, Graciela Limõn, Juan Marichal, Pablo Neruda, Gary Soto, Luis Valdez, Alma Luz Villanueva, and many others. Under the Fifth Sun collects stories of love, family, work, exploration, politics, history, culture, and survival—fiction, poetry, memoirs, commentary, and drama—covering more than two centuries of Latino presence in California, from missionaries and soldiers to gold miners, farmworkers, and political refugees. The Illuminated Landscape: A Sierra Nevada Anthology Edited by Gary Noy and Rick Heide The essays, poetry, and stories of The Illuminated Landscape embrace the Sierra Nevada experience: an ancient creation myth involving an unlikely contest between Hawk and Crow, vignettes of life in mining camps, a curious deer taking a stroll through Beetle Rock, the solace felt by a family held in an internment camp. Excerpts from well-known writers such as Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, Mary Austin, Wallace Stegner, Gary Snyder, T. Coraghessan Boyle, and Ishmael Reed as well as original works from local authors reveal how important the Sierra has become to our cultural psyche as an irreplaceable refuge for our spirits. “This is a remarkable anthology, taking the reader chronologically from the dawn of time to environmental issues of today. This book belongs on every bookshelf of the best-of-the-best of Californiana.”—W. R. Swagerty, Director, John Muir Center, University of the Pacific “This anthology looms large on the horizon…”—David Guy, CEO, Yosemite Association Page 30
The Way We Lived: California Indian Stories, Songs & Reminiscences Malcolm Margolin, Editor The Way We Lived is a rich and varied collection of stories, love songs, chants, and more from native people around the state. Sometimes poignant, often humorous, and always fascinating, these pieces show the remarkable perseverance of native culture and ways in modern times.
Testimonios: Early California through the Eyes of Women, 1815–1848 Rose Marie Beebe (Author), Robert M. Senkewicz (Author) When famed historian Hubert Howe Bancroft sent Thomas Savage, Henry Cerruti, and Vicente Perfecto Gómez out to gather the oral histories of the pre-American residents of the new state of California, he didn’t count on one thing: the women. When the men weren’t available, Savage, Cerruti, and Gómez collected the stories of the women, almost as an afterthought: these were archived at the University of California; some were never even translated into English…until now. From the editors of the highly influential Lands of Promise and Despair, here are thirteen women’s first-hand accounts from when California was part of Spain and Mexico. They lived through the gold rush and saw their country change so drastically, they understood the need to tell the full story of their people and the place that was California.
Highway 99: A Literary Journey through California's Great Central Valley Edited by Stan Yogi, Gayle Mak, and Patricia Wakida From the myths of the Yokuts Indians to stories and poems by famous contemporary writers, this anthology showcases the best literature of California's Great Central Valley and provides a rich view of the region's physical and emotional landscape. With thirty-three added selections and a new foreword. "Highway 99 is a rich mix of poetry, fiction, and journalism."—Los Angeles Times "Fascinating stories and poignant memories are bumper to bumper in Highway 99, and anyone with an interest or an address in California will find it compelling."—San Francisco Chronicle Page 31
AFTERWORD…
“I was here before the land had names. My people came across the sea, across the bridge of land between two worlds. They spread across the new world, from north to south, some down the edge of the ocean, some to the mountains, some to the flatlands, some to the desert. “I was here when we gave names to the land. California and pueblos named for the saints where we built our missions and where our soldiers lived and died. I was here when cattle and fruit trees and vines spread across the land from the mountains to the sea. “I was here with the new Americans who came seeking the hard gold of the hills and rivers and the soft gold of otter and beaver. I was here when they built their towns of trees and their farms with sweat. “I was here when the iron rails came and when the roads were made for automobiles, bringing more and more people to the land from The East. I was here when they built their schools and banks of stone and their great cities of concrete and glass. “I was here in their words on pages and thoughts in minds. I was here in their hearts when they wept and when they laughed. “I am always here. I am California…”
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