This collection was published in 1989, and while there are good selections, it also feels very dated 30 years later, as most of the writing is post-1945. 1945-1989 was 44 years, and with another 30 post 1989, it's time for a new edition/a new anthology (and maybe one is out there, this book has been on my shelves for way too long).

So this book was certainly interesting, but dated. It's hard to put yourself back 30 years, and try to forget the events that are so obviously missing.

What is definitely missing, though, is much of the state. This book is heavy on Hollywood and San Francisco. A touch of Monterey, the desert, of Japanese and Chinese and black communities. But where is the Central Valley? Where are the depression-era emigrants who came from the deep south, Oklahoma, Eastern cities, looking for agriculture and then during WW2 industrial jobs? Where is the Valley of Heart's Delight, better known now as Silicon Valley--that transformation occurred between 1945 and 1989, yet is not here. Where is Mendocino County and the rest of the far north? Cesar Chavez is mentioned, but shouldn't there be an excerpt focusing on Latino agricultural labors, grapes, etc? Instead there is an entire section on "the kind" of dreamers who come to California, on weird "California" spirituality, on stereotypes. Disappointing. ( )

This anthology of writings about California includes M.F.K. Fisher's story "The First Oyster" (from The Gastronomical Me).

Contains:
South of Tehachapi / Carey McWilliams --
California as paradisee / Julián Marías --
Saturday, August 9, 1969 / Vincent Bugliosi --
Driving in a back projection / David Thomson --
Artist, friend, and moneymaker / Ben Hecht --
America in the movies / Michael Wood --
Myra Breckinridge / Gore Vidal --
Final cut / Stephen Bach --
Hollywood hustle / Irene Oppenheim --
A normal evening with Audrey / Leonard Michaels --
Los Angeles by night / Jean Baudrillard --
The first oyster / M.F.K. Fisher --
The pachuco / Octavio Paz --
Failure to zigzag / Jane Vandenburgh --
The pump house gang / Tom Wolfe --
Saint Aloysius / Danny Romero (Cont.) The leader of the pack / Randall Sullivan --
The land / Mary Austin --
California / Simone de Beauvoir --
In the beginning and topographical / Henry Miller --
Big Sur / Jack Kerouac --
November surf / Robinson Jeffers --
Ideal cosy nook / Jean Baudrillard --
Boomer / Linda Niemann --
East of Eden / John Steinbeck --
Everybody's autobiography / Gertrude Stein --
Mount Whitney / Clarence King --
Notes from a native daughter / Joan Didion --
Credo / Richard Rodriguez --
San Fransisco / Simone de Beauvoir --
From sea to sea / Rudyard Kipling --
McTeague / Frank Norris --
The railroad earth / Jack Kerouac (Cont.) Twisters and shouters / Maxine Hong Kingston / Baghdad-by-the-bay / Herb Caen --
San Francisco letter / Kenneth Rexroth --
San Francisco jazz scene / Ralph J. Gleason --
A supermarket in California / Allen Ginsberg --
Berkeley / Simone de Beauvoir --
In the fifties / Leonard Michaels --
Why it happened in Berkeley / Mario Savio --
The cops and robbers game / Tom Wolfe --
A social history of the hippies / Warren Hinckle --
The killing ground / Stanley Booth --
False match / Henry Bean --
Lies / Renée Lieberman --
LaJaponesa / Raquel Scherr --
I know why the caged bird sings / Maya Angelou --
Heart mountain / Gretel Ehrlich --
The joy luck club / Amy Tan --
One thing after another / Gary Soto --
My Oakland, there is a there there / Ishmael Reed --
Wilkommen Castro / Randy Shilts (Cont.) The J car / Thom Gunn --
Ishi in two worlds / Theodora Kroeber --
The events in California / Czeslaw Milosz --
Journey to nowhere / Shiva Naipaul --
The hip plumber / James D. Houston --
Getting it / Leo E. Litwak --
Escape from Esalen / Jonathan Lieberson --
Ground zero / Ishmael Reed --
The suicides of the temple / Umberto Eco --
Ravishing hyperrealism / Jean Baudrillard --
The desert / Aldous Huxley --
Facing west from California's shores / Walt Whitman