ZELENA


    KNJIŽARA

The author’s personal preferences for 31 works Which have been read beyond
a single generation, ranging from Anza’s California Expeditions to Raymond
Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely, are the subject of this illuminating study of the
creative impulse in vsriters, not necessarily iqative sons, who have made California
the setting of their masterpieces.
In combining biography and criticism the author has gone to the original sources
of each work, seeking the forces that created it—a love of landscape or a woman,
a social cause, or a sense of local history, finding no two alike. What results is a
literary chronicle of California, seen against a background of seacoast, valleys,
mountains, deserts, and cities.
Among the thousands of books of Californiana, it may be safely said that there
is none like this one which blends literature, history, and geography With biogra-
phy and criticism.
First serialized in Westways these chapters Were widely hailed as a freshly
original guide to Californials living literature. Now revised and rearranged, with
the addition of brief reading lists, photographs, and a map, they form a valuable
introduction for readers of all ages to one of California’s chief glories, its richly
varied creative literature.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lawrence Clark Powell knows the literature and landscape of California from
a lifetime of residence in the state. Although born in 1906 in Washington, D. C.,
he established domain in California (thanks to his parents and the Santa Fe Rail-
road) at the age of 4. months. According to an informed source, he soon began to
read and to explore his environment.
Educated in the public schools of South Pasadena and at Occidental College, the
University of California and the University of Dijon, his professional career of
28 years was spent at UCLA, where he administered a great research library and
founded a library school. In 1966 he retired to Write and to travel, both of which
he has continued to do. He has also held a second Guggenheim Fellowship
and was a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Studies at Wesleyan University.
Since his retirement he has taught at Wesleyan, Simmons College, Loughborough
Technical College, and the University of Arizona, and has had published an
autobiography and a volume of selected essays. He is presently engaged on a book
about South-Western classics.
Throughout his career, Powell has Written prolifically on literature, biography,
history, and bibliography, establishing his reputation as a readable authority on
California and Southwestern literature. With his wife Fay he lives on the coast
at malibu where he may be encountered on the beach in search of driftwood.