Mythic Geographies

[Timothy C. May]

LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu wrote:

> Tim May writes:
> "Parts of "Vineland" are clearly based on locales in Humboldt County,
> but parts are also clearly based on locales in Santa Cruz and Monterey
> Counties. In fact, I can pretty much see the locales within a couple
> of miles of where I now live.
> 
> In any case, Santa Cruz is not in "Southern California."
...
> Speaking of Southern California, am I correct in assuming that the 
> "brief but legendary coastline" of Trasero County is midway between
> LA and San Diego, about where Camp Pendleton is now (and not too far
> from Zhlubb's former residence of San Clemente)?  Is there an historical
> analogy for the College of the Surf and the People's Republic of Rock and
> Roll?  (I can recall news of the many blowups on California campuses
> *besides* Berkeley in the 60s, but I was on the East Coast then and that
> was far away.)

Yes, I went to UC Santa Barbara, 1970-74, where rioters burned down
the "Bank of America" branch office in "Isla Vista." IV, as everone
calls it, is the little community adjacent to the campus, which sits
right on the ocean and is about as close to College of the Surf as one
can get.

But Pepperdine University, in Malibu, is an even closer match, in my
opinion.

Trasero County may be Orange County. Not too many universities down
there, but of course P. is free to mix-and-match.

Speaking of Orange County, a nice SF novel is Kim Stanley Robinson's
"The Gold Coast," one of my favorite novels. It describes in vivid
detail a wacky, crowded "OC" of sometime in the next century, complete
with drug-manufacturing surfers and aerospace company spies.

--Tim May


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