BOOKIT!
When I picked up a copy of ‘New California Writing 2011,’ I assumed the authors in the anthology would write about landscape — California as place. I thought I would read a piece and think, ‘Oh, that sounds like California.’ But really, what is California?
In the introduction to the anthology, publisher Malcolm Margolin, founder and owner of Heyday, debates the lines drawn by early cartographers and asks, ‘But do these boundaries make any sense whatsoever? Do they encompass a definable ecological or cultural area? Of course not.’
According to Margolin, ‘From everywhere people came to California, whose only boundaries were the human imagination.’ And that sets the tone for this anthology.
Forty-four voices lift off the pages, the stories illuminating real life, day-to-day living. Yes, there are writings on geology, flora and fauna, lands transformed and memories of how California used to be (all beautifully written, I might add). Stories take place in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Fremont, Marin, and San Clemente. But, topography isn’t always the impetus. As Margolin notes, cliches are replaced with new ways of seeing things, a willingness to question and create new dreams. The subjects of the pieces exemplify this approach: a son recalls an absent father, two moms lovingly raise two sons, a union battles the Borax industry, a professor rants about the cost of education, a building is honored for its artistic design. In this anthology, you never know what you’ll get, which is part of its attraction: There’s something for everyone.
The anthology brings out the best of the best California writers: Michael Chabon (‘The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay’), Jennifer Egan (‘A Visit from the Goon Squad’), and Rebecca Solnit (‘Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas’), alongside new California writers on the literary scene. Fiction, nonfiction, and poetry fill up the 300-page compilation. The table of contents lists each piece’s origin, and a section at the end highlights the authors’ specialties — poetry, short stories, novels — titles of their books, and their websites. Berkeley publisher Heyday did its homework finding eloquent writings from novels, newspapers, magazines, reviews, even a commencement speech.
Examples of some stories include one written by an Indian author who recounts how his culture is perceived in San Francisco: how his ‘kitsch is their cool’ — Indian food, Indian music, Bhangra aerobics classes. Only Bollywood saves the author from all things stereotypical because Americans think Bollywood films are ‘syrupy romantic’ and he relishes every aspect of them. A narrator in a poem questions if a fish’s last breath is caused by exhaustion or pain; another poem narrator recalls the war in Iraq with a doctor in Long Beach removing shrapnel and road debris from a soldier’s body. ‘A Flood Story,’ one of my favorites, imagines a flood forcing all people to build rafts from pieces of their homes, then float in the flood, families tied together while considering the state of things — how humans, animals, and the earth react to the natural disaster. In this beautifully written piece of fiction, imagery abounds.
Numerous titles pique one’s curiosity as well: ‘George Blanda Ate My Homework,’ ‘The Tao of the Cow,’ and ‘How to Choose a Soundtrack for a Bank Robbery.’ This ain’t no John Muir singing the praises of the pine tree nor Tony Bennett crooning ‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco.’ But it is literature, and in the words of Margolin, ‘This is great literature.’
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