MarysLibrary

Americans and the California Dream

March 9,1988, was a warm sunny day in San Marino. Oranges hung on the trees looking like a movie set. I spent a couple of hours that day walking around the gardens of the Huntington Library - the desert garden, the Japanese garden, the Shakespeare garden, and half a dozen others. I drank a cup of tea in the cafe and then I browsed in the bookstore. That's where I spotted Kevin Starr's Americans and the California Dream, 1850-1919.

I was employed by TRW then as a configuration manager and I was spending a lot of time living in the Pasadena Holiday Inn and working at the Jet Propulsion Lab trying to build software written 3,000 miles away on another computer system. But I did get a little time off, and I spent it exploring Los Angeles and environs. Hollywood, Brentwood, Santa Barbara, Anaheim, San Gabriel, the Claremont colleges, Mulholland Drive, the Getty Museum, the Gamble House. I was captivated. A book about the history of California and especially of the Southland, the part of the state south of the Tehachipies, was just what I wanted.

I read the book that winter and again the following year and I collected the other seven books in Starr's California Dream series. I've been reading my way through them over the years. And I've been re-reading them again recently.

California became a state in 1850. In part because of the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill and the ensuing Gold Rush and in part because California offers the most perfect climate in the world (if you don't worry too much about the earthquakes.) The state grew at enormous speed. It was home to the sole original American architectural development, the bungalow. Its early universities, Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley, became world class within 50 years of their founding. It produced authors like Jack London and Frank Norris. And it was home to the Sierra Club and the Sierra Madre from which the organization takes its name. The Sequoias there were saplings before the time of King Tut.

Starr's social history attempts to explain the unique California ambiance and the state's mesmerizing hold on Americanos. Fascinating.

It's Bastille Day

 

To celebrate, go here.

The New Media

 

My niece, Ella, is writing a book, The Gient Panda, and she has chosen to use a new medium: the tarmac at her grandparents' airport. Gives the pilots something to read while waiting to take off. Ella is 8 years old today.

Young Mrs Savage

Having read about D E Stevenson, of whom I had not previously heard, in Elaine's blog, Random Jottings of a Book and Opera Lover, I've been reading those of her novels that the Spokane Library still has on their shelves. Quite a few, surprisingly, as many of her novels were reprinted in the 1970s in the US.

My favorite so far is Young Mrs Savage, published in 1948, and dealing with the adjustment to life after the war in England and Scotland. Dinah Savage married young and after the war found herself with a small income, no servants, and four small children. Her husband was not killed in the war; he died in an accident immediately afterward.

Her brother, back after many years at sea and working in London in a boring job (but a job nonetheless - not every returning veteran found one), suggests she take the children to stay in the house they grew up in, on the seaside, near Edinburgh. She and the children meet lots of new people and she becomes better acquainted with many people she knew as a child.

A lovely book, slow moving, including stories Mrs Savage tells her children, little adventures for the children, and some mysterious new friends. Just the sort of book women must have longed to read right after the war - a book in which the struggles are over and the good are rewarded and - as it takes place mostly in Scotland - there are lots of scones, much whipped cream and strawberry jam, and no problem finding chops for dinner or candy for the children.

Slipstream

When I posted about the Cazalet novels by Elizabeth Jane Howard, Barbara at Life Must Be Filled Up mentioned the author's autobiography which apparently inspired many people, places, and events in the novels. These include a grandfather who was a "minor composer" (he wrote the Warsaw Concerto), a mother who was a ballet dancer (with Diagehlev's Ballets Russes), and a character who wanted to be an actress (herself.)

The autobiography, Slipstream (2002) sounded so interesting that I ordered a copy from abe.com. And today it arrived, displacing entirely the four books that came home from the library the day before yesterday and the five books that I bought at Auntie's Bookstore yesterday, and indeed, every other book in the house.

At the front of Slipstream, Howard provides a cast of characters - people she has known who are mentioned in the book - that includes Sybille Bedford, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Cyril Connolly, Joyce Grenfell of St Trinian's fame, Terence Kilmartin of Proust translation fame, Olivia Manning, Carson McCullers, Ivor Novello (real name David Ivor Davies), Malcolm Sargent (whose nickname apparently was Flash Harry), and Barbara Skelton (whose memoirs were filled with what Anthony Powell called "peculiarly incisive malignity.")

Also Elizabeth Taylor (the author), Antonia White, Pablo Casals, Marc Chagal, Isadora Duncan, and many others.

Thank you Barbara.