The Grapes of Wrath in a landslide victory? I wasn’t surprised by that or much else in the revised California canon. The most prominent authors and most famous books all seem to be here. I’m fairly confident that exceptions occur only in categories I’m not reading. If I included historical fiction, for example, Ramona and maybe a couple other books would make the list. Otherwise, the chances are pretty good that anyone who has read a work of California fiction published before 1960 has read one of the canonized books.
The retabulated version of the canon varies a bit from the one I compiled in 2006. Nine different books show up, though none near the top. Three are short story collections that I hadn’t read earlier -- The Continental Op (No. 32), The Daring Young Man on the High Trapeze (No. 42) and The Big Knockover (no. 44). Three are stories of environmental calamity -- Storm (No. 30), Earth Abides (No. 36) and Fire (No. 48); two are tales of family life -- Cress Delahanty (No. 24) and Mama’s Bank Account (No. 33); and one is an exposé of competitive sport, The Game (No. 43). Of the nine that didn’t make the cut this time, the one suffering the most unexpected demotion is They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, which can be found in only 273 libraries.
It’s clear from first glance that this version of California’s canon, like other lists of important books, is skewed toward works by well known authors. John Steinbeck appears nine times, Raymond Chandler six times and Jack London four times. James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, Frank Norris, William Saroyan and George R. Stewart check in with three books each. Add F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jack Kerouac with two apiece and you have ten authors producing 78 percent of the canon.
A check of authors’ first names reveals another skewing. Although women wrote about 25 percent of the California fiction I’m reading, only two books by female authors appear on the list. Since male authors almost always write about men, female protagonists -- or even important female characters -- don’t show up very often in the canonized books. Their absence may give the erroneous impression that serious fiction necessarily focuses on the thoughts, experiences and problems of men and that female protagonists are found only in romances, cozy mysteries and other light fiction. I’ve read more than 100 books that don’t meet this stereotype.
Here’s my final complaint about the retabulated canon. It, like any canon, gets its validity from the notion that its entries have greater merit than whatever it omits. Add to that a halo effect, like the one in this list or its 2006 predecessor, and readers may come to believe that only a handful of authors has produced nearly all the worthwhile California fiction. Which is wrong in two ways. First, many of the canonized books are not all that terrific -- and even those that clearly possess literary distinction may not impress some readers. Second, the canon does not represent the body of California fiction, which includes around 3,000 titles and offers great variety in subject, style and intent. Many, many of those books are worth reading. Which, of course, is one of the points this blog is trying to make.
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