Notes On the California Novel

1. Images of Disappointment

2. Grapes of Wrath as the definitive version

3. Day of the Locust represents the East Coast expection of certain doom

4. Taken up by the Mystery writers (Chandler, Cain, Ellroy)

5. Driven by makers and unmakers. Mike Davis and Joan Didion write about the makers (William Muholland, Harrison Gray Otis,etc.) and unmakers (earthquakes, smog, santa ana winds, etc.)

6. The move from California as the future to the future as obsolete (The Jetsons and Phillip K. Dick)

7. The Literature of California erases place. The story of Hollywood as a move from the place where movies are made to the way movies are made. Place turns into technology. California as not a place but a technology.

8. In the future California writers will not dote on New York and no one in California will use the phrase “back east” as if they have already been there.