California is great, as “great” is defined by the New Oxford American Dictionary: to an extent, amount, and intensity considerably above the norm. To be comprehensive on the subject is impossible; to deliver particular insights and offer snapshots of different sensibilities is what we attempt in this issue.
Jed Perl begins with a westward glance from New York: Always on the “outside” of American art and culture, California has “liberated creative spirits from across the country and well beyond.” In David Reid’s fifth installment of the History of the History of Empire, westward glances begin earlier: it’s 1453, Constantinople has fallen to the Turks, and Western Europe is in despair… but what’s that over there, on the other side of the world? (Cue: Columbus, Cortés, Cabrillo). Love defined Walt Whitman’s celebratory vision of California, as James O’Neil writes, even though the American bard never set foot in the state. For Josef Chytry, “Any celebration of California should begin with acknowledgment of its legendary origins out of Oaxaca,” home to the first Mesoamerican city-state and the “feathered serpent” known as Quetzalcóatl, “bringer of human life, fertility,” and other essential forces.
In her photos of objects and reflections in Southern California and Mexico, Janet Sternburg finds stirring commonalities on both sides of the border, but commonalities that are, as Hannah Liberman writes in Contact Sheet, “illusory, momentary, fleeting.” Our symposium proves the Golden State is just as difficult to pin down as sunlight for such luminaries as Brenda Hillman, David L. Ulin, Michael Hiltzik, and others. Our dispatchers are as flung far over time and place as ever, but all with one thing in common: vivid ties to California. Andrew Moss, having grown up in London, remembers Stanford in 1968; Victoria Nelson, who grew up in Southern California and Florida, recounts intimate encounters with California wildlife. Texan Rose McMackin returns to her home state to reflect on her teenage years; Jeff Hewitt heads to Joshua Tree to report on the New Age’s latest incarnation; Steve Wasserman recalls the time he chased after Orson Welles for an obituary of Jean Renoir for the Los Angeles Times and got the master’s last word in print; and our Latvian former intern, now junior editor Klaudija Klava, meditates in and about California time.
Drawing on Jed Perl’s idea of California as the “Great Subculture,” our latest Person-to-Person installments find Simon Wolf talking to poet Cedar Sigo about the San Francisco Renaissance and the Beats, and Marius Sosnowski covering the Chicano art scene in Los Angeles with pastel artist and muralist Judithe Hernández. Scott Saul reminds us why Britain’s Gavin Lambert remains one of the best Southern California writers you’ve (probably) never heard of. Natasha Boas shares “Bobbie” Stauffacher Solomon’s last interview—with a visual assist from Roman Coppola; and Lydia Nakashima Degarrod unveils the vitalizing art that Japanese painter Chikaji Kawakami produced during his time in the Japanese internment camps. Poetry by Rosie Stockton; fiction from Sky O’Brien and Jed Perl; reviews by Adolfo Alzuphar, Emmerich Anklam, Zara Kand, and Marius Sosnowski. Finally, a conversation with Corrina Gould on the return of the West Berkeley Shellmound to the Ohlone people rounds out the issue, and returns us to the western shore’s deep history.
We believe each of these works help point to California’s greatness—that expansive and intangible quality intrinsic to nature, to nations, to lasting works of art which—by meaning a great many things to every person—contains multitudes.
