From West to East: California and the Making of the American Mind - Hardcover
Artfully weaving together the strands of California's social, political, and cultural history, Schwartz chronicles the state's turbulent life from the Spanish conquest through the Civil War, the labor movement, the Great Depression, and the birth of modern cultural radicalism in the Beatnik revolution and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
From the Author:
Note re: Kevin Starr's review of my book
I thought readers would be interested to find out that Kevin Starr has reviewed my book, in the March 15, 1998 Book Review section of the Los Angeles Times. Although it reversed the title of my book, showing it as "From East to West," rather than correctly, his review was quite positive, and includes the following comments: "Brilliantly, Schwartz anchors this American story in the utopian ambitions of the Native American, Spanish and Mexican past. For Schwartz (and this will become increasingly true of all histories of California to be written in the 21st century) has discovered that one cannot begin to decode American California without reference to its pre-1846 conquest cultures. His understanding of the vision of the good life encoded in Native American cultures--blending, as they do, sensuous physicality and spiritualism, hence establishing the DNA code of California psychology--constitutes one of the strongest parts of this book. His discussion of the Spanish colonial era is likewise impressive. Never, even from the most accomplished of academic historians, have I read a more compelling account of how a largely Catalan utopianism pervaded the Spanish thrust northward into Alta California after 1769. A self-schooled expert in Catalan and Majorcan culture, personally connected to the leading scholars in this field, Schwartz makes a genuine contribution to the understanding of California in anchoring the commonwealth upon a foundation of Catalan utopian dreams, themselves building upon the utopian dreams of Native American California... Deep within this book resides another thesis, semi-coherent, never fully released: Art is superior to politics. Art endures long after the sound and fury of politics have passed. The real heroes of "From East to West" or, at least, the figures who release in Schwartz an otherwise blocked capacity for approval, are the avant-garde artists of California, such as composers Henry Cowell, Harry Partch and John Cage; poet and essayist Kenneth Re! xroth (the one unambiguous hero Schwartz allows himself); poet Robert Duncan; painters Clyfford Still and Elmer Bischoff; and the sui generis Jaime de Angulo, the Big Sur-based psychoanalyst, folklorist, anthropologist and cross-dresser. Schwartz shows a special affinity for such aesthetic personalities who, in both their life and their work, act out the yearnings, complications and unresolved conflicts of their time... Schwartz has written a book that is as tumultuous, conflicted, idiosyncratic, autodidactic and relevant as the California tradition it seeks to rescue and restore."
Synopsis:
I thought readers would be interested to find out that Kevin Starr has reviewed my book, in the March 15, 1998 Book Review section of the Los Angeles Times. Although it reversed the title of my book, showing it as "From East to West," rather than correctly, his review was quite positive, and includes the following comments: "Brilliantly, Schwartz anchors this American story in the utopian ambitions of the Native American, Spanish and Mexican past. For Schwartz (and this will become increasingly true of all histories of California to be written in the 21st century) has discovered that one cannot begin to decode American California without reference to its pre-1846 conquest cultures. His understanding of the vision of the good life encoded in Native American cultures--blending, as they do, sensuous physicality and spiritualism, hence establishing the DNA code of California psychology--constitutes one of the strongest parts of this book. His discussion of the Spanish colonial era is likewise impressive. Never, even from the most accomplished of academic historians, have I read a more compelling account of how a largely Catalan utopianism pervaded the Spanish thrust northward into Alta California after 1769. A self-schooled expert in Catalan and Majorcan culture, personally connected to the leading scholars in this field, Schwartz makes a genuine contribution to the understanding of California in anchoring the commonwealth upon a foundation of Catalan utopian dreams, themselves building upon the utopian dreams of Native American California... Deep within this book resides another thesis, semi-coherent, never fully released: Art is superior to politics. Art endures long after the sound and fury of politics have passed. The real heroes of "From East to West" or, at least, the figures who release in Schwartz an otherwise blocked capacity for approval, are the avant-garde artists of California, such as composers Henry Cowell, Harry Partch and John Cage; poet and essayist Kenneth Re! xroth (the one unambiguous hero Schwartz allows himself); poet Robert Duncan; painters Clyfford Still and Elmer Bischoff; and the sui generis Jaime de Angulo, the Big Sur-based psychoanalyst, folklorist, anthropologist and cross-dresser. Schwartz shows a special affinity for such aesthetic personalities who, in both their life and their work, act out the yearnings, complications and unresolved conflicts of their time... Schwartz has written a book that is as tumultuous, conflicted, idiosyncratic, autodidactic and relevant as the California tradition it seeks to rescue and restore."
A history of California from the sixteenth century to the present day which attempts to show that American national culture developed first in the East, and spread Westward across the frontier, in opposition to the more common theory that American identity is rooted in Westward expansion.
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- PublisherSimon & Schuster Ltd
- Publication date1999
- ISBN 10 0684831341
- ISBN 13 9780684831343
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages512
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