Gerald Haslam and Ann Ronald: A Conversation

A N N R O N A L D University of Nevada, Reno Gerald Haslam and Ann Ronald: A Conversation Ann Ronald: Many writers and readers and critics have called California a metaphor for the American experience. Would you agree? Gerald Haslam: It’s a metaphor, but not necessarily the metaphor. What California most represents is dynamism, variety, tolerance . . . and some environmental problems. Even back in the days that some romantics like to pretend were “stable” in America, there was rapid and constant change: hidden minorities struggling for equality, artists pushing the limits of expression, the unsatisfied migrating, often west, all of them seeking, seeking. Those things still go on intensely in this complicated state, where intrastate migration, among other things, is common. And that migration is a way of freeing oneself from the restrictions of existing paradigms; we can argue that folks ought to stay and work things out—but that is an old paradigm. Add to that the variety of this state’s terrain (for instance, most outsiders don’t have a clue how vast are the open reaches of this state), of population (over ninety languages are spoken in the Sacramento School District, one hundred-plus in L. A.’s), of cir­ cumstances (the Great Central Valley is the richest farmland in the history of the world, yet it hosts six of the ten poorest communities in the nation). Talk about things to write about! With some exceptions, there is a remarkable tolerance for human variety here, too, everything from so-called “mixed mar­ riages” to hippies to white supremacists to . . . well, you name it. If you count illegal aliens, we’re already the mainland’s first state 116 Western American Literature whose population boasts more non-whites than whites. I like to say this is where America really becomes part of the Americas, and where Asia and Oceania enter the New World. In California you can’t have the illusion that this country is exclusively a European invention. AR: Is California really the West? GH: One of the herd of neo-Montanans (this one from L. A. originally) said to me a while back, “California isn’t West, it’s West Coast.” I said, “Which California?” This state has a bunch of asso­ ciated histories, some of them quintessentially western. He didn’t know much about California; he knew L. A. California has a bunch of associated histories, but one dominat­ ing myth. No state that I’m aware of is more dominated by mythol­ ogy—the California Dream—the sun-tanned blondes, the palm trees, the beaches. In fact, it’s a geographically, ethnically, and socially diverse state. AR: What does the word California mean? GH: Well, it comes from the name “Califia.” Califia was the queen of Amazons in a 1510 novel by Garcia Ordóñez de Montalvo called Las Sergas de Esplandian, in which he posited that there was an island called California off the coast of the Indies inhabited only by black Amazons. The griffins which they rode were cloaked in gold. It was the only metal on the island. And the women warriors themselves wore gold for their armor, and woe to the sailors they captured! So the name “California” was established in the European imagination before any of them ever set foot on this territory. When the Spaniards gave that name to this bountiful place, connotations came with it. AR: In The Other California you say, “Too many people, including some who claim to be experts, don’t recognize that California is a collection of distinct regions of unique histories and experiences of varied people gathered under one name.” How can you coherently talk about such a diverse state? GH: I’ve subdivided the state by history and by literary output. There are a lot of other ways to subdivide it. Kevin Starr’s excellent cultural histories illustrate the varied forces at work in the major Ronald/Haslam 117 sub-regions. Philip Fradkin recently published a book called The Seven States of California, in which he gives a sort of a bioregional /historical/sociological subdivision which I think is a perfectly reasonable way to do it. Gary Snyder uses a...