Redwood Coast Review

THE REDWOOD COAST Volume 13, Number 3 REVIEW Summer 2011 A Publication of Friends of Coast Community Library in Cooperation with the Independent Coast Observer MEMOIR Cherry Blossoms Pamela Malone or more than 20 years I taught English as a Second Language. The Fmajority of my students were adult Japanese women, wives of “salary men,” who came here for three or four years before returning to Japan. While I had started in a language school, I soon became a private teacher, teaching one on one, either at my house, or more frequently, in their houses, as most of my young students, some recently married, could not drive. There had been so many students. Just counting from memory, I thought of LUONG QT around 60. Where were they now? What had happened? Could they all be alive and well, or was one of my lovely, young students swept out to sea on a great Hiro- Too Big for Its Bridges? shige monster wave? When a student returned to Japan and ended the lessons, I always said, if you Rebecca Solnit’s San Francisco swagger write me, I will write back. Many did. Most of them would just send a Christmas Jonah Raskin card the year after they got back, others would continue to write for years. I INFINITE CITY: A SAN FRANCISCO ATLAS and cultures meet, mix, merge, and go Not surprisingly, Solnit doesn’t see kept these cards in several large manila by Rebecca Solnit their separate ways. The Indians who herself as a chauvinist or as a public rela- envelopes. Like everything Japanese, the California (2010), 167 pages, illustrated lived around the Bay for eons thought of tions agent for the city that Herb Caen, cards had a unique style. They were made themselves as “dancing on the brink of the Chronicle’s famed columnist, dubbed from special papers, painted artfully with oes the world have a center? the world,” and that’s the way I often feel “Baghdad by the Bay”—a moniker that delicate, sometimes pop-out landscapes, The innovative French in SF: I’m on the edge and ecstatic. At everyone wants to forget, including Solnit, that perfectly portrayed the rivers and sociologist Jean Baudrillard the same time, I hate The City’s incessant who is one of the city’s foremost intel- mountains of Japan. Some were like col- believes it does. “It has to be need to advertise and promote itself as lectuals. Chauvinists usually aren’t aware lage made from silk and lace. said,” he writes in his meta- the best and the first in a very competi- of their chauvinism, even intellectuals like In simple English, they would tell me Dphysical travelogue, America, “that New tive American way. Sadly, Solnit shares in Solnit and Baudrillard, who share com- how they were doing. But there were too York and Los Angeles are at the center of the regional chauvinism. She puffs up the mon ground. many cards and over the years the manila the world.” San Francisco doesn’t even place in the manner of a one-woman PR Indeed, one might think of Solnit as a envelopes threatened to consume my desk. appear as a dot on Baudrillard’s cultural agency. Jean Baudrillard of San Francisco. Like So, in 2008, when I painted my office, map, but perhaps that’s because, as he also Her brand of chest-beating isn’t, of him, she’s preoccupied with the politics, a lot of boxes of paper, going back to explains, he’s not interested “in the deep course, the only one available to authors the philosophy and the esthetic of land- 1973, were recycled. Somehow, I fear America of mores and mentalities” but writing about San Francisco. The Works scape. In her books, she comes back again the manila envelopes, with all the cards only “surfaces.” Progress Administration (WPA) Guide to and again to San Francisco as a place with and letters from Japan, had fallen willfully Perhaps San Francisco only has depth San Francisco in the 1930s, first pub- multiple personalities, and sees it from into the recycling pile. and no surface and, perhaps, as a French lished in 1940 and just reissued with an multiple points of view. For Solnit, The When I heard about the earthquake, I intellectual Baudrillard can’t bear to introduction by David Kipen, shows that a City is an archeological site, a labyrinth, a ran to find these envelopes, but could not. admit that America boasts a city that guidebook can exude local pride without movie set, a kind of space ship, and a state All I had was one manila envelope dated at times —as Jack Kerouac and others patriotic flag-waving. Elements of the of mind. No contemporary America author from 2009. It contained only four ad- have noted—rivals Paris. Then, too, San WPA book are obviously outdated; the and intellectual has written about San dresses. I frantically wrote those students, Francisco may not appear to be a central waterfront isn’t the bustling port it once Francisco with more enduring passion and with my email address, asking if they American place because it sits on the east- was. But the WPA guidebook’s two-dozen focused energy than she has, and no one were all right. ern edge of the Pacific Ocean and looks to authors—including literary luminar- has more exhaustively mined its hidden I fell in love with Japanese culture East Coasters as though it’s at the end of ies such as Kenneth Rexroth, Madeline treasures, and showcased its exemplary through literature. One Japanese novel, the continent and is a kind of island unto Gleason and Dorothy Van Ghent—aim exiles and natives for all the world to see. more than any other, made an impres- itself with its own gestalt. Of course, to to explore The City’s “elusive identity” sion on me. It was The Makioka Sisters Latin Americans, San Francisco isn’t the rather than nail it down, and they never ver since she began to write and to by Junichiro Tanizaki. It is about the West but El Norte, much as Japanese and descend into regional drum beating. The Epublish books, beginning in 1990, struggles of four aristocratic sisters, two Chinese immigrants regard it as a front book’s many maps and illustrations also Solnit has been writing extended love in Tokyo and two in the more traditional door to the America continent. explore San Francisco’s elusiveness. letters to San Francisco and the whole Bay and old- fashioned Osaka. I no longer The view of San Francisco as the Area. Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas remember the plot or the sisters. What I quintessential anti-America city is perhaps The City seems to is her most ardent and unabashed paean to remember were Tanizaki’s poetic descrip- the most striking notion advanced by San the city in which she resides. In fact, she tion (in Edward Seidensticker’s transla- Francisco’s Rebecca Solnit. In Infinite need to promote calls it “a valentine of sorts to a complex tion) of the seasons, as reflected through City: A San Francisco Atlas, her most place.” Her previously published books traditional Japanese culture: the food, the recent book, she calls San Francisco “the itself as the best and have won awards, but Infinite City might tea, the Ikebana (floral arrangements), the un-American place.” Then, with character- the first in a very well be her signature San Francisco work. songs chosen by one sister to be played on istic aplomb, she adds that San Francisco Granted, the ideas in her new book aren’t the koto. And more than this, the silken is also the “place where America invents competitive Ameri- exactly new, but the tone and attitude kimonos, which changed with the seasons, itself”—a view that San Franciscans have are. Over time, Solnit has mellowed; reflecting the landscape as it melted from for the most part embraced and broadcast can way. Sadly, a sense of nostalgia for a lost world of spring to fall. gleefully and globally. Or so it seems to Solnit shares in the hippies in Golden Gate Park and African The Japanese treat the seasons and na- me after listening to them for more than American jazz artists in the Fillmore have ture in a sacramental way. They celebrate three decades, and also after carrying on regional chauvin- replaced anger and even bitterness about the cherry blossom season, Ohanami, a long love-hate relationship with “The an ominous capitalist future that she once “watching cherry blossoms.” They sit City,” as Northern Californians are wont ism. She puffs up the insisted was hatched in San Francisco. under the trees, picnic, play music and to call it. place in the manner The basic arguments in Infinite City watch the blossoms flutter and fall. The I love San Francisco because it strikes are reiterations and refinements that are life of the cherry blossom is brief. In the me as an outpost on the Pacific, and of a one-woman PR almost all expressed in previous books, Japanese film Afterlife, each recently de- because it’s at a crossroads where Asian, such as Wanderlust: A History of Walk- ceased person arrives at an office building European and Latin American languages agency. ing (2000), Hollow City: The Siege of See BLOSSOMS page 4 See SOLNIT page 9 Page 2 The Redwood Coast Review Summer 2011 EDITOR’s noTE BOOKS A Big Man Into the Wild Alexa Mergen n the early years of the RCR, Richard Perkins once complained to me that BREAKING INTO THE BACKCOUNTRY it was cold and empty, Iwe weren’t publishing enough “local” by Steve Edwards and boundless like writers—by which I guess he meant scribes Nebraska/Bison Books (2010), 178 pages death.” residing somewhere between Timber Cove Back with his and the Navarro River.

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