Californian Sensibility

Wed Aug 30 11:46:09 CDT 2006

On Aug 30, 2006, at 11:48 AM, David Kipen wrote:

> Hey, who wants to settle an office bet? Can anyone name a work of  
> fiction about someone moving from California to the East Coast? Or  
> do they all run the other way around?

The protagonist in Donna Tartt's The Secret History goes from Silicon  
Valley to an Elite New England college resembling (can't thing of the  
name of the place at  the moment).

By the way I just read a somewhat similar book called Special Topics  
in Calamity Physics by a new author name of Marisha Pessl.

Really liked it.

P.

>
> All finest,
> David Kipen
>
>
>
>
> On 8/23/06, robinlandseadel at comcast.net  
> <robinlandseadel at comcast.net > wrote:
> Tom Wolfe
>
>  -------------- Original message ----------------------
> From: "David Kipen" < kipend at gmail.com>
> I could swear I've written somewhere that Pynchon and Didion share  
> one distinction with one other and perhaps no one else: They've  
> each written well about both Northern *and* Southern California.  
> Though perhaps TC Boyle would also qualify. Any other candidates?
>
> All finest,
> David
>
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: "David Kipen" <kipend at gmail.com>
> To: " robinlandseadel at comcast.net" <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
> Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2006 13:22:46 +0000
> Subject: Re: Californian Sensibility
> I could swear I've written somewhere that Pynchon and Didion share  
> one distinction with one other and perhaps no one else: They've  
> each written well about both Northern and Southern California.  
> Though perhaps TC Boyle would also qualify. Any other candidates?
>
> All finest,
> David
>
>
> On 8/23/06, robinlandseadel at comcast.net  
> <robinlandseadel at comcast.net > wrote:
> "The White Album" is fantastic, and well worth picking up a copy.  
> It's easy to find in used book stores.
> -------------- Original message ----------------------
> From: "John Carvill" <JCarvill at algsoftware.com >
> > Never been to anywhere on the West coast of the US, but loved  
> Vineland
> > passionately.
> >
> > Just finished reading a long profile/interview of Joan Didion in The
> > Observer, which touches on this. May be of general interest also  
> but as
> > I say it's quite long so won't post it all.
> >
> > Not read anything of Didion's. Might give 'Slouching..' a try soon
> > though.
> >
> > Wish they'd do something of this length and depth on Pynchon. Brief
> > samples below.
> >
> >
> > 'The years of writing magically'
> >
> >
> > There is the sense in that piece [The White Album], and several  
> others
> > of hers from that time, of someone looking on with a kind of  
> appalled
> > fascination at the excesses of late Sixties counterculture. The  
> title
> > essay of Slouching Towards Bethlehem was actually written in  
> 1967, and
> > dissects the ascendant hippy scene in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury
> > area with a mixture of wry observation and mounting unease. 'I  
> didn't
> > see a lot of peace and love on the Haight in the so-called summer of
> > love,' she says now. 'It seemed like every kid I talked to there was
> > desperately unhappy.'
> >
> > Was her original point of view essentially generational, though?  
> Might
> > she have immersed herself in the hippy scene had she been  
> younger? 'I
> > was from a different generation,' she drawls. 'I grew up in a  
> different
> > time and my writing was formed by the values of that other time.  
> Had I
> > been of the generation I was writing about, I don't know if I  
> would have
> > been swept along.'
> >
> > .
> > .
> >
> >
> > As a Californian now living in New York, I ask her where she  
> feels she
> > most belongs? 'Oh, California. For sure. I'm not really attuned  
> to here.
> > At one level, I feel perfectly comfortable in New York, but I really
> > believe that is because it is one of those cities where people feel
> > comfortable wherever they are from. The only times I felt a deep
> > attachment to the city was in my twenties, and again after 9/11.  
> But I
> > would say for sure that I have a Californian sensibility.'
> >
> > And how would she define that sensibility? 'Well. it's an outsider's
> > sensibility. Definitely. On the edge of things. People don't feel at
> > home in Los Angeles if they come from somewhere else. It takes a  
> long
> > time to get it. And people who come from there tend to have an  
> outside
> > point of view. That's certainly true in my case.'
> >
> >
> > http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/biography/story/ 
> 0,,1854009,00.ht
> > ml
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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