A friend recently asked me whether the California authors I’ve been reading ever published well known novels set outside the state. I seized the opportunity to create the list below. In the first section of each line is the author’s name. In the second is one of his or her California books. (I’ve read them all but was too lazy to add links to the blog pages.) And in the third section is one of his or her books that is set somewhere other than California and is well known enough to have once received a screen adaptation. Titles in brackets are names of the resulting films if they are different from the book titles. The list isn’t comprehensive, but it does show that, yes, an author who set a book in California might also have set one elsewhere.
Gertrude Atherton / The Avalanche: A Mystery Story (1919) / Black Oxen (1923)
Vicki Baum / Falling Star (1934) / Grand Hotel (1929)
Eugene Burdick / The Ninth Wave (1956) / The Ugly American (1958)
W. R. Burnett / Nobody Lives Forever (1943) / Little Caesar (1929)
Edgar Rice Burroughs / The Girl from Hollywood (1923) / Tarzan of the Apes (1912)
> > > [Tarzan]
Niven Busch / They Dream of Home (1944) / Duel in the Sun (1944)
Vera Caspary / The Weeping and the Laughter (1950) / Laura (1942)
Vina Delmar / About Mrs. Leslie (1950) / Bad Girl (1928)
Thomas Dixon / Comrades (1909) / The Clansman (1905)
> > > [The Birth of a Nation]
Jack Finney / The Body Snatchers (1955) / Assault on a Queen (1959)
F. Scott Fitzgerald / The Last Tycoon (1950) / The Great Gatsby (1925)
Ernest Gann / Fiddler’s Green (1950) / The High and the Mighty (1953)
Dashiell Hammett / The Dain Curse (1929) / The Thin Man (1934)
Marion Hargrove / The Girl He Left Behind (1956) / See Here, Private Hargrove (1942)
Alfred Hayes / My Face for the World to See (1958) / Girl on the Via Flaminia (1949)
> > > [Act of Love]
Dorothy Hughes / In a Lonely Place (1947) / The Fallen Sparrow (1942)
Aldous Huxley / After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (1939) / Brave New World (1932)
Jack Kerouac / The Subterraneans (1958) / On the Road (1957)
Janet Lewis / Against a Darkening Sky (1943) / The Wife of Martin Guerre (1941)
> > > [The Return of Martin Guerre]
Jack London / The Game (1905) / The Sea Wolf (1904)
Anita Loos / A Mouse Is Born (1951) / Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925)
Norman Mailer / The Deer Park (1955) / The Naked and the Dead (1948)
Daniel Mainwaring / One against the Earth (1933) / Build My Gallows High (1946)
> > > [Out of the Past]
Richard Matheson / A Stir of Echoes (1958) / The Incredible Shrinking Man (1956)
Frank Norris / McTeague (1899) / The Pit (1903)
John McPartland / No Down Payment (1957) / The Kingdom of Johnny Cool (1959)
> > > [Johnny Cool}
Charles Mergendahl / The Girl Cage (1953) / The Bramble Bush (1958)
Robert Nathan / The Married Look (1950) / A Portrait of Jennie (1940)
Liam O’Flaherty / Hollywood Cemetery (1935) / The Informer (1925)
John O’Hara / Hope of Heaven (1938) / Ten North Frederick (1955)
J. B. Priestley / The Doomsday Men (1938) / Benighted (1928)
> > > [The Old Dark House]
Ayn Rand / Ideal (1935) / The Fountainhead (1943)
Budd Schulberg / What Makes Sammy Run (1941) / The Harder They Fall (1947)
Upton Sinclair / Oil! (1927) / The Jungle (1906)
John Steinbeck / The Pastures of Heaven (1932) / The Moon Is Down (1942)
Irving Stone / False Witness (1940) / Lust for Life (1934)
Jim Thompson / Now and on Earth (1942) / The Grifters (1963)
Irving Wallace / The Chapman Report (1960) / The Prize (1961)
Nathanael West / The Day of the Locust (1939) / Miss Lonelyhearts (1933)
Jessamyn West / Cress Delahanty (1953) / The Friendly Persuasion (1945)