No place for a Puritan : the literature of the California deserts / edited by Ruth Nolan.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Nolan, Ruth.

Series:

California legacy book

A California legacy book

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Deserts--California--Literary collections.

Deserts.

California--Literary collections.

California.

Genre:

Literary collections.

Literature.

Physical Description:

xiv, 345 pages : map ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, Calif. : Heyday Books ; Santa Clara, Calif. : Santa Clara University ; Riverside, Calif. : Inlandia Institute, [2009]

Summary:

A man foolishly and arrogantly collecting live rattlesnakes

A lone woman striving to make a home in a remote desert canyon

A blooming romance by the desolate Salton Sea

To the uninitiated, the California desert is a parched and unforgiving place, but to those who know it intimately, it is rich in plants, animals people, and a seemingly endless variety of geography. It also abounds in stories-tales of human folly, courage, aspiration, struggle, and at times heroic delusion.

No Place for a Puritan brings together eighty writers and poets to pay homage to a land that has been feared and romanticized throughout the ages. From the traditional stories of the Cahuilla Indians to Joan Didion's acerbic cast of characters in Play It as It Lays, from Mary Austin's meditations in The Land of Little Rain to the writings of today's young and emerging authors, this anthology unfolds the many stories of the California desert with freshness, drama, delicacy, and surprise.

Contents:

Dangers of the Desert

The Land of Little Rain / Mary Austin 3

No Place for a Puritan / William Justema 9

From Desert Country / Edwin Corle 11

Sleep in the Mojave Desert / Sylvia Plath 23

From "Death Valley" / Edward Abbey 24

The Desert Cries / Craig Childs 26

Mirage / Ruth Nolan 31

From Point Last Seen / Hannah Nyala 32

Bitch bitch bitch / Mary Sojourner 38

Crossings, Past and Present

Font's Complete Diary: A Chronicle of the Foundings of San Francisco / Pedro Font 47

First Conflict with Americans / Alfred L. Kroeber, Clifton B. Kroeber 51

From Death Valley in '49 / William Lewis Manly 56

Journal excerpts, Pacific Railroad Survey, 1853 / William Phipps Blake 61

From a letter to the Atla California, July 1, 1866 / Anonymous 64

From The White Heart of Mojave / Edna Brush Perkins 67

From Travels with Charley / John Steinbeck 69

From Macho! / Victor Villaseǫr 74

From "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" / Aldous Huxley 79

From Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas / Hunter S. Thompson 82

Leaving Palm Springs / Jeanette Clough 87

Refuge And Exile

Massacre at Desert Hot Springs / Dorothy Ramon, Eric Elliott 91

From McTeague / Frank Norris 95

From Willie Boy / Harry Lawton 100

Songs My Mother Taught Me / Wakako Yamauchi 104

Self-Portrait on the Border Between Mexico and the United States (1932) / Margarita Luna Robles 113

From Farewell to Manzanar / Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, James D Houston 114

From Play it as it Lays / Joan Didion 119

From Aquaboogie / Susan Straight 125

A Dog Turns Back When You Turn Back / Beckian Fritz Goldberg 135

Irregular Flight / Kent Nelson 138

Loss, Revival, and Retributions (Neon Desert Collage) / Juan Felipe Herrera 147

Lure of the Desert

Desert Center / Margaret Erwin Schevill 151

From The Desert / John C. Van Dyke 152

From The Great California Deserts / W. Storrs Lee 155

From The Man Who Walked Through Time / Colin Fletcher 160

How To Be a Desert Rat and Like It / John W. Hilton 162

In the Desert / Enid Shomer 163

Bagdad Chase Road in July / Dick Barnes 165

Mojave Narrows / Song 166

Minding Desert Places/Winter-4 P.M / Judy Kronefeld 167

From Into the Wild / Jon Krakauer 168

From "West, Old Man" / Clara Jeffery 172

From Twenty Thousand Roads / David N. Meyer 185

Climbing at Joshua Tree / Gayle Brandeis 188

Rocks in the Shape of Billy Martin / Deanne Stillman 190

Making The Desert Home

Chemehuevi Indian Creation / Clifford E. Trafzer 197

From First Families / L. Frank, Kim Hogeland 202

The Birds / Francisco Patencio 208

From Desert Wildlife / Edmund C. Jaeger 211

Desert Refuge 3 (October 1941) / Marshal South 214

Life on the Desert / Panamint Russ 219

From A Mine of Her Own / Sally Zanjani 223

Stampede for Jackrabbit Homesteads Deluges Los Angeles Land Office / Anonymous 230

From The Desert Was Home / Elizabeth Crozer Campbell 232

From My Life on the Mojave / June Le Mert Paxton 238

From The Raw Pearl / Pearl Bailey 240

The Salt / Tod Goldberg 243

Shoshone Indian Homeland Statement to Congress / Pauline Esteves 255

The Changing Desert-A New Type of Beast

From Hoover Dam / Joseph E. Stevens 259

From Cadillac Desert / Marc Reisner 262

From Your Desert and Mine / Nina Paul Shumway 265

From Juniper Blue / Susan Lang 269

California Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 58-Relative to the Doctor June McCarroll Memorial Freeway / State Senator David G. Kelley 281

From The Man Who Captured Sunshine / Katherine Ainsworth 283

Speech at Coachella, 1973 / Cšar E. Chv̀ez 289

From Welcome to Saint Angel / William Luvaas 291

Near the Desert Test Sites / Sherod Santos 295

From Savage Dreams / Rebecca Solnit 297

What the Fire Forgot / Julie Sophia Paegle 301

From 'Isill Hq̌was Wx̀ish / Katherine Siva Sauvel, Eric Elliott 303

Conserving And Protecting the Land

Postcard from Above / Rebecca K. O'Connor 309

At the Bomb Testing Site / William Stafford 312

Long Odds / Edythe Haendel Schwartz 313

From Still Wild, Always Wild / Susan Zwinger 314

From All the Wild and Lonely Places / Lawrence Hogue 319

From The Mysterious Lands / Ann Haymond Zwinger 324

From "The Stone Horse" / Barry Lopez 330.

Notes:

Includes index.

ISBN:

9781597140980

1597140988

OCLC:

318243344