The Apple Falls from the Apple Tree by Helen Papanikolas (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 412 Western American Literature urban and rural immigrant fam ily experiences. Hers are the fam ilies of urban workers and entrepreneurs, miners, and those who go “out to sheep” in the arid, mountainous countryside. A 1939 setting for the opening story and a 1995 end­ ing for the final story provide the book’s chronological contours. Gendered immigrant fam ily experience is of special interest to Papanikolas, whose complex fem ale protagonists often feel resentment (usually suppressed rather than overtly expressed) at the male privilege that suffuses their culture of origin; simultaneously they retain significant, even fierce, attachment to that cul­ ture. The stories’ women also demonstrate considerable ambivalence toward the Mormon culture of Salt Lake City and toward the larger culture of the American West, which often clashes with Greek culture while inexorably reshaping it in som e measure. Educational opportunity, for instance, appeals strongly to some fem ale characters, but “overeducation” creates anxiety about decreased chances o f marriage within the Greek American community. One woman observes that arranged marriages spared Greek women the pressure felt by American women to attract eligible men. Food, religion, and...