The Best of California …as featured in California Magazine, 1976–1986 (review)

Reviews 247 In contrast to the stories, which are tightly written, artistic in the best sense of that word, Davis’essays are prose rambles. They’re not slack; they are willing to go wherever the trail (literal or intellectual) leads. Davis has a fine eye for detail and a storyteller’s gift for anecdote. Most of these essays were originally penned for Holiday magazine. They’re clear-headed and diverting without being in the least pompous or scholarly. They’re exactly the sort of leisure reading more of us might have sought before television. Now that the University of Idaho Press has reprinted them in this handsome volume, a new generation can turn off the tube. LEX RUNCIMAN Oregon State University The Best of California . . . as featured in California Magazine, 1976-1986. (Santa Barbara: Capra Press, 1986. 321 pages, $9.95.) This collection of 37 essays celebrates the tenth anniversary of the Cali­ fornia Magazine, first published as New West. At the time of the name change, Editor William Broyles, Jr. announced that it was the goal of the magazine “to evoke the identity of the state while insisting that it is, somehow, one place and one culture.” Appropriately, the first article, “California’s California and Vice Versa” by Kevin Starr, is a survey of the magazine’s development from an early concentration on what he terms “show biz glitz,” through an era of timely investigative and informative news stories. Still later, the magazine focused on environmental problems, particularly from a northern California view­ point, and included an emphasis show-casing the arts as they related to the state’s heritage. Starr observes that many articles of this later period are classics which will draw the attention of future historians. My emotional thermometer raced to a new high when I read the article “Operation Wigwam” by Dan Noyes, Maureen O’Neill, and David Weir. Using declassified information, the writers delineate the extreme secrecy sur­ rounding the planning and execution of the first deep underwater nuclear blast 450 miles off the coast of San Diego, May 14, 1955. The blast was two and a half times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. The frightening and tragic results of this reckless experiment make one question the sanity of the Navy. “The Politics of Big Sur” by Ehud Yonay isanother eye-opener. It reveals the struggle of the residents of Big Sur, many descendents of the original settlers, to keep their home from becoming a national park. Their fight is against highly organized conservation groups and the government in Wash­ ington. No matter how fervent a conservationist you may be, you find yourself applauding the residents. 248 Western American Literature Similarly, the remaining articles are thought-provoking, some entertain­ ing, but all relating to California in a singular way. I finished the collection with the desire to follow the publication into its future, feeling that California isuniquely for Californians. WILLIAM F. KIMES Mariposa, California Semi-Native. By Jim Arnholz. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986. 179 pages, $10.95.) Jim Arnholz is a lucky man, even if he does live in Albuquerque. You see, he writes a column four times a week for the Albuquerque Jour­ nal and they actually pay him for writing these short essays about anything and everything that comes to his mind. (If you have hot figured it out yet, this review is written in the style of the newspaper essay written by Arnholz.) Anyway, this guy makes a living just wandering around New Mexico— visiting interesting places (like Santa Fe) and talking with interesting people (like Jimmy the Burrito Man) — and then writing about his adopted state and the people who live there. Although he is not a native New Mexican, Arnholz has lived in the state long enough to think of himself as a “semi-native,” a title he flaunts on the back window of his beat-up, native-New Mexican pickup. And now he has a book of his essays published by the University of New Mexico Press which is in Albuquerque. It turns out that he got to hear about the publication of the book while doing some serious drinking at a great cafe...