LITERARY by Lawrence! Ferlinghetti and Nancy J. Peters Has it been only 130 years? ’s phenomenal growth from insignificant provincial outpost to freewheeling larger-than-life superstate, more with it than anywhere back East, is the stuff of fairy tales, where Jack’s beanstalk just grows and grows and !grows. It began much earlier, of course. Even before the 15th Century had ended, California was being imagined as an island by Columbus and his peers as a magical El Dorado peopled by black Amazons who hurled gold spears. Three centuries later the embryo that grew into California was no longer being fed by European dreams of conquest but by the hopes of Americans seeking escape from a stultifying past, grabbing at a second chance to a freer and better existence. Something new and good had to be out there at the end of the !frontier. They came first to San Francisco from where the golden news of Sutter’s Mill in1849 was quickly followed by a thorough trampling of Northern California real estate. Out of this cloud of dust dampened by hysterical sweat came the true beginnings of California !literature. Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Nancy J. Peters’ photographic essay, containing more text than associated with the form, traces Bay Area literary history from that time to the present day. Ferlinghetti’s introductory essay sets the tone, embodying both a touch of the poet and the persistent, punchy jabs of a local booster and political gadfly. “It { San Francisco} looked like an island, vaguely Mediterranean, with its white buildings, a little like Tunis from the sea, not really a part of America…Eighty or ninety years ago, when all the machines began to hum (almost, as it seemed, in unison), San Francisco was still the only city on the West Coast…It was never a cowboy town— derbies outnumbered Stetsons and sombreros…the railroad spreading its tentacles over the West, became that octopus Frank Norris novelized, and it sowed the iron sperm of !that industrialized monster which rules life today.” Co-author Peters takes us up to the 20th Century. Working with a compact but encyclopedic series of chronological sketches, she links the emergence of San Francisco’s literati with the city’s history—the land booms, the development of mining and agriculture, the struggle for water, the establishment of utopian colonies, the beginnings of lumber, oil, and aviation conglomerates. The book’s structural plan is obvious: an all- encompassing survey to emphasize detail while scaling down essence—not a bad design !for a book covering so much ground. The parade of authors begins with Francisco Palou, whose doting Boswellian notes recorded for posterity the achievements of Junipero Serra. Many of the names are familiar—Richard Henry Dana, , , Ambrose Bierce, Robert Louis !Stevenson, Lincoln Steffens, Jack —others less so. J. Ross Browne produced a body of work that influenced such disparate talents as Herman Melville and Twain. Fitz-Hugh Ludlow’s 1857 “ presaged the druggy days to come in Haight- Ashbury a century later. Ur-hippie Sadakichi Hartmann traipsed down the road to Los Angeles where he would imbibed many a glass !with John Barrymore and other tipplers. News from Eastern cities traveled slowly so local literary journals began to flourish, starting with The Pioneer in1854, thus initiating the San Francisco small press tradition. Local geography was interpreted imaginatively. Mary Austin’s fictional milieu was the desert; Robinson Jeffers’ images derived from the sea; Clarence King and John Muir wrote of California’s mountains. A distinctly Western literary style began to evolve— !exaggerated and fantastic, tolerant, open-ended. Many of the writers credited as being San Franciscans were in fact transients who came to the city late and stayed. Open to new ideas that flowed in with the seaport tide, San Francisco’s singular literary ambience attracted mavericks of all kinds. Henry George advocated the redistribution of wealth with his single tax theory, Edwin Markham’s “The Man With the Hoe” rallied exploited farm workers by the thousands, Kenneth Rexroth championed radical literature through his salon, William Everson spearheaded the Conscientious Objectors’ movement in the West during World War II by courageous example, Allen Ginsberg serenely fought establishment censorship over “Howl,” Lenny Bruce endured bust after bust for his four-letter iconoclasm. Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Bookstore, set among North Beach’s topless tourist’s traps, functioned as a cultural and political oasis, while his anarchistic poetry kept the pot boiling. This is a catalogue that !adds up to more than the sum of its parts. Alas, the more contemporary sections come across as less substantial. Street poets and publishers by mimeograph are given more credit than they merit. Nor is there much joy in seeing a philosophical lightweight like Eric Hoffer demolished by a sledgehammer !review, reprinted here word for sarcastic word. On balance though, “Literary San Francisco” is a solid achievement that has been doggedly researched and is accompanied by some 200 decently reproduced photographs, some of which are rare. The authors have laid the foundation for those who wish to study !in greater depth writing inspired not only by San Francisco but by all of California. ! Los Angeles Times, 1980 !