A Wasteland of Contradictions: The California Dreams of Nathanael West
From The Literary Traveler Archive: By Jim Tejani El Centro, California lies sixty miles inside the Arizona border in Imperial County. This formidably-named milieu can…
Tag: California
Buddhism the Jack Kerouac Way: A South Korean Templestay
By Ailsa Ross Jack Kerouac’s novel, The Dharma Bums, is so full of sweet words and joy that every line I read made me want…
Robinson Jeffers: The Poet and Stone Mason of Tor House
By Victor A. Walsh Carmel by the Sea was a wild, sparsely populated place when the California poet Robinson Jeffers and his wife Una arrived…
Jack Kerouac and John Steinbeck on the Californian Coast
By Kat Clay The moment I saw him I knew he was the man I would marry. A twenty-minute conversation changed my life; in those…
Woman Gone ‘Wild’: Cheryl Strayed Traveling Solo
By Amanda Festa In her memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, Cheryl Strayed hikes 1,100 miles on the PCT, which…
John Muir and the Family Ranch in Martinez
John Muir was the prophet of a new order that looked to nature for guidance and inspiration. His legacy, along with creating national parks like Yosem…
Tao House, Eugene O’Neill’s “Final Harbor”
By Victor A. Walsh As the shuttle bus edges up the last grade of the gated private road, the morning fog has settled like smoke…
A Meeting of Minds: John Steinbeck and Edward F. Ricketts at the Lab in Monterey
by Victor A. Walsh In the gray light of early morning, the weathered, batten board building stands like a phantom from an earlier time when…
Vladimir Nabokov in the Grand Canyon & the Discovery of Butterfly Neonympha
by Lois Kapila “I am driving off to California to-morrow with butterfly-nets, manuscripts and a new set of teeth.” ~Nabokov, from a letter to Edmind…
Jack London: The American Karl Marx
Called the "Boy Socialist: and the "American Karl Marx," Jack London succeeded so well as a writer under the capitalistic system that he could afford …