California Fault: Searching for the Spirit of a State along the San Andreas by Thurston Clarke (review)

Reviews 411 California Fault: Searching for the Spirit of a State along the San Andreas. By Thurston Clarke. (New York: Ballantine, 1996. 417 pages, $24.00.) Thurston Clarke’s summation of California is contained in the pun of his title: California of the ’90s is full of faults, geological and otherwise, and Clarke means to show them to us as we travel the length of the state with him along the San Andreas Fault, from the town of Eureka in the north to the Salton Sea in the south. California is a huge state, in part defined and determined by the fault, and w e’re in for a long ride, and a fat book. So large and various is California that we may rightly suspect any book that purports to present its “spirit,” and to his credit, Clarke is appropriately modest in his subtitle. He searches— for hundreds of m iles— but presents us with no grand Zeitgeist. Besides the science, lore, and history of California quakes, peo­ ple and places abound in the book (politicos, editors, geologists, merchants, tourists, locals, tree-huggers, rednecks, retirees, teenagers, cops, flashers; jails, schools, malls, bars, neighborhoods, theme-towns, gated comm unities) and what rises generally out of all of this— though some of the evidence runs counter— is that California’s spirit is now tarnished and troubled. The resulting gloom , though, may ultimately work to California’s good. Clarke suggests near the end of the book that “this apparently gloom y decade [may be] a correction to years of pathological optimism.” Trouble, of course, is more interesting to write (and read) about than its opposite, so Clarke’s subject is working for him. Clarke’s responses remain fresh, and he shares them with us even when they’re illogical or inconsistent with each other. In this way, ironically, w e come to trust him as an observer. Though he can write a withering sentence when he w itnesses something partic­ ularly outrageous or foolish, he manages to portray California’s ills without seem ing to bash the state. Clarke is in fact congenial, and he’s convincing enough that he appears much of the time to be under sway o f nothing stronger than common sense. H e’s also a bloodhound for details, and he knows how to juxtapose them, often to great effect. Clarke proves such an astute observer, and he so clearly has fun in the writing, that this reader could have traveled even far­ ther with him. P a u l L e h m b e r g N o r t h e r n M ic h ig a n Un iv e r s it y The Apple Falls from the Apple Tree. By Helen Papanikolas. (Athens: Ohio University Press/Swallow Press, 1996. 241 pages, $27.95/$14.95.) This volume contains six stories of the lives of Greek immigrants and their descendants in and around Salt Lake City. Western landscapes of that city and the surrounding region permeate the stories in which Helen Papanikolas explores ...