Customer Reviews

From West to East: California and the Making of the American Mind

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The NY Times and California historian Ken Starr are correct: Stephen Schwartz, the author of this book, seems to want to use California as a means of persuing a vendetta against communism. The whole thing is the author's private history; I don't think there is much for anyone who really cares about or is interested in California.

As a scholar, Schwartz lacks credibility.... His book does have some interesting stories, however, from California labor history.

Stephen Schwartz sings a paean to the experimentalist and revolutionary roots of California. From the few shreds of information about the indigenous peoples of the region through the coming of the Spanish, the arrival of the Americans and all the brawling, boiling cauldron of turmoil and triumph that followed, Schwartz remains true to his task of charting the formation of a unique section of America and of rendering its struggles and strife, its tragedies and transcendence real and stunningly palpable to the reader fortunate enough to happen upon this work. Throughout it all, he maintains his objectivity, but never hides his primary allegience: a love of freedom and a boundless sympathy for explorers, tradesmen, priests, shamans, empire builders, unionists, radicals and artistic originals of every possible stamp and hue as long as they demonstrate a respect for that freedom in whatever their endeavors. Yes, every type of character, even some villains, are given center stage and admired if they remained true to that experimentalist vision, no matter what the consequences, but are soundly criticized if they betray their own unique qualities and submerge themselves in some capitulation to the gray forces of mediocrity that always inhabit each age. Sometimes such mediocrity and stultifying forces were represented by the railroads, sometimes by forces on the left, such as the Communists. However, contrary to some reviews I have read, there is nothing rabid about Schwartz's appraisal of such forces. He never loses a sense of compassion and goes out of his way to examine the personalities of these historical personages to find some bit of redeeming grace. Clearly he loves the radicals, the anarchists who were loud, clear and unambiguously vociferous in forwarding their agendas as much as he finds little of value in the deadening straitjackets of the Communists whose hidden, clandestine activities drew no inspiration from the historical ethos of experimentalism in freedom that he succeeds so well in documenting. Schwartz writes well and has an ear for the music of language. To engage such a large mass of historical material and bring not only the major players, but even the minor ones to light with such verve and verisimilitude is a rare accomplishment indeed. You will be educated, you will be entranced, you will be entertained, but most of all, at the end, you will be grateful to the author for having the talent, the concern and the love of his subject that allowed him to make history come alive for you.

Stephen Schwartz ignores the key sentences in Kevin Starr's review of his book: "The real business of 'From East to West,' meanwhile, is Schwartz's one-man crusade to show how Russian-controlled Stalinism infected and corrupted an indigenous left-utopian California tradition." The book's thesis: "Beginning in the 1930s and rising to incandescence through the 1940s and the mid-1950s, the indigenous left tradition of California...became increasingly controlled by pro-Stalinist communists."

The most important thing, as Starr notes in the first sentence of his review, is that the book "is not what it claims to be." Nowehere in the jacket description is there any mention of Schwartz's anti-Communist obsession, and in few places in the book itself--aside from the prologue and epilogue--is there much about its pretentious subtitle, "California and the Making of the American Mind." As Starr says, this is a book that the publisher has! tried to market one way, but which heads off in its own "idiosyncratic" direction.

The (pink) litmus paper test for Schwartz is whether or not a writer or cultural figure was sympathetic to Communism. Some of the loonier judgments that Schwartz's anti-Stalinist seismograph leads him to: John Steinbeck's 'In Dubious Battle' "failed completely as a novel" and the film of 'The Grapes of Wrath' "was and remains a colossal and absurd failure." Carey McWilliams' 'Factories in the Field' "contains a good deal of balderdash," while Mike Davis's 'City of Quartz' "is incoherent and replete with mistakes." Woody Guthrie did not sing "real folk music," and Allen Ginsberg's 'Howl' was a "rant...that seemed to reflect brain damage." Finally, Robinson Jeffers is guilty of a "dour outlook and pretentious verse."

More importantly, serious issues and events--like civil rights, the Japanese-American internme! nt camps--get sidetracked in the search for "commies.&! quot;

The book, Starr warns, "should not be compared to formal history." Or, it should be added, to anything resembling literary or cultural history. It is, as Schwartz uses the word, a "rant."

The first half of this book is an interesting history of California labor and radical politics - stuff they don't teach in school, but as the timeline moves towards WWII the book degenerates into a rant about the California Communist Party. The author has a passionate distate for Harry Bridges that colors much of the subsequent discussion. I also have to say that some of the "facts" presented are tenuous, especially for a journalist. Information about Oppenheimer is controversial at best, and he seems to use some facts out of context to advance the vehement anti-CP line.

I should note that I read this book in Paris which made me laugh out loud about some the claims the author makes about the importance of California radicals on world politics and intellectual history. In the end, I wish this was a 300 page book stripped of most of the author's more outrageous opinions and presented as a good history that is seldom read.

As a native of Massachusetts (and world traveler), I expected to learn the opposite of what New Englanders learn in high school: how California changed us. Schwartz left that point behind after penning his title.
I agree with other reviewers that his grasp of history (pre-WWII) was good - I learned a ton about the early settlement and development, and that has enriched my travels here. I also agree that his rant about communism was too much. But there were other problems - the book turned into a SF-Chronicle vs LA argument, for one. Also, by concentrating so much on CA history, Schwartz forgot to say how it traveled east. And I thought I was going to learn that. He avoids Hollywood cultural history too much (the part that does not pertain to Communism), when that would have been vital in proving his entire point.
I could go on, but will close by saying that the book is worth reading until it gets to the year 1918. Just tear out the rest.

This major revisioning of the meaning of California is a landmark of the cultural geography of the State. Schwartz offers a strikingly readable history, a cultural revision of the myths that embody the place of the California dream. He realizes that California is more a state of mind than a State of the Union. By placing the genesis of California from the deep utopian dreams of Spanish explorers, Schwartz manages to begin the deeper work of reintegration of Californian Hispanic heritage, a heritage that will become incontrovertible in the opening decades of the next century. He is also sensitive to other marginal and silenced aspects of the California story. His linking of Amerindian use of the datura and styles of shamanism to the visionary alternatives of the 60s counterculture, His strong feeling for labor history as it created a proletarian culture that has been so often down played in most cultural histories of the State. Schwartz in many ways integrates the political culture with the literary and cultural, especially poetic enterprise as embodied in the San Francisco Renaissance. By showing how California culture has a greater cosmopolitan depth than the Eastern Establishment has usually allowed, being swept up in its own ethnocentric and Eurocentric biases. In many ways following Schwartz's riveting arguments, California is truly more cosmopolitan and multicultural than has been realized. It is the future of the American dream. It provides a unique panorama of the political poetics of California. We are treated to a better account of the communist influences on culture than has usually been admitted. Schwartz has mastered an immense amount of material. Much of it never before integrated into the cultural history of the State. This mastery of several languages and an transnational poetic idiom helps to make this study one of the most vibrant and controversial cultural histories to appear in years. It makes Kevin Starr's multivolume epoch of California seems pedestrian and plodding. Schwartz'! s well written saga is one of the best revisionist histories that reinvents many of the terms and characters of the cultural politics and poetics of the State. It is a postmodernist epic history that does more to invent the future than it does by rediscovering a neglected past.

An increadibly interesting and fun book; the best book I read in years. Schwartz must have spent decades researching California's history spanning four plus centuries. An eyeopener, a book that will become an 101 course on California history. Who is this guy? Whoever it is - A HUGE THANKS for the excellent job written in a delightful and readable manner. A masterpiece

This is an incredibly silly book. I picked it up hoping it had potential, because it seemed to want to delve into the interesting topic of --without irony-- California intellectual history.

Instead, Schwartz uses this book an a opportunity to expose almost everyone halfway progressive in the state as either a Communist, a Stalinist, or both. The funniest laugh I got was when Schwartz refers to 'The Grapes of Wrath" movie as a failure compared to the book-- and that no one watches the movie any more (!)-- but then goes on to cite Ma Joad's sentimental ending speech about "the people" as a prime example of Commie influence in Hollywood.

Only one problem-- that speech was proudly written by-- get this-- that great fellow traveler, DARRYL F. ZANUCK!!! It was one of his proudest career boasts. Schwartz makes total fool of himself on this point alone. An unreliable, silly screed. Not recommended.

I won't normally recommend a book with a theory or hypothesis that may be easily challenged; and so I make no exception here. "From West to East" very quickly makes the point which I personally wholeheartedly agree with. We now know;and have the information available, with the help of this fine text by Mr. Schhwartz, which draws together all the formerly disparate parts of the puzzle,and tells us matter of factly that America, the nation began in California, and moved East! A must read!

A recent article in WSJ illustrates Schwartz's analitical abilities: ------------ WSJ - October 14, 1998 Another Nobel Laureate's Stalinist Past

By STEPHEN SCHWARTZ

Well, they did it again. A year after they awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature to Dario Fo, a repulsive anticlerical buffoon from Italy, the Swedish Academy has continued its run of leftist nostalgia, handing the honor to José Saramago, a Portuguese novelist and unrepentant member of that country's Communist Party.

As with last year's recognition of Mr. Fo, Mr. Saramago's Nobel drew protests from the Vatican, where the daily L'Osservatore Romano criticized the award as "ideologically oriented," and protested that Mr. Saramago "remains an inveterate Communist." While the Portuguese Bishops' Conference defended their countryman, the Vatican was not alone in its dissent. Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, a real hero of intellectual integrity and 1980 Nobel laureate in literature, told the Portuguese daily O Publico: "I am not a supporter of the writings of José Saramago. It is a fashionable kind of writing, filled with humor--but low humor. I do not support this work."

Believing Catholics are understandably appalled at the Portuguese author's corrosive attacks on Christianity, as exemplified by his "Gospel According to Jesus Christ," published in the U.S. by Harcourt Brace in 1994. Mr. Saramago's Christ has a sexual relationship with Mary Magdalene, in a scene reminiscent of Martin Scorsese's film "The Last Temptation of Christ." What is up with the Swedish Academy? Are they, as representatives of an officially Protestant nation, fanatical pope baiters?

Mr. Saramago, even more than Mr. Fo, has pursued a political career that should have excited some concern among the Swedes. Mr. Fo was a fascist in his youth, then became a communist, and remains an extreme radical leftist. But his antisocial pursuits are mainly intellectual.

Mr. Saramago, on the other hand, as a militant member of the Portuguese Communist Party, brings with him a history of really sinister behavior in the interest of a Stalinist agenda. This novelist has behind him an unapologetic involvement in a serious attempt to destroy the freedom of the press in his native country.

Few today seem to recall that in late 1975 Portugal was poised to leave NATO and become a new Soviet satellite. The situation in Lisbon at that time was so dire that it was compared with Czechoslovakia in 1948.

On Nov. 25, 1975, the Portuguese Communist Party, under its hard-line boss, Alvaro Cunhal, attempted a coup in Lisbon, using leftist Portuguese army paratroops as its cat's-paw. The adventure failed, but the party had laid the foundation for the coup by a wide-ranging campaign against freedom of the press, a months-long effort that closely resembled the assaults on press freedom that accompanied Fidel Castro's rise to power in Cuba.

Mr. Saramago, who was then assistant editor of the Lisbon paper Diario de Noticias, played a major role in this provocative strategy. The future Nobel laureate was a strident promoter of "true socialism" against "bourgeois democracy," overseeing the saneamento or "purges" of so-called fascist elements from the Portuguese media.

As chaos deepened in Portugal, Mr. Saramago's colleagues began protesting that they were being forced to report according to the Communist Party line and that their articles were subjected to a censorial "fine-toothed comb" by Mr. Saramago. Verbal complaints continued, followed by the "Manifesto of the 24," in which a group of journalists working under Mr. Saramago denounced the internal climate at his newspaper. Twenty-two of them were fired.

Mr. Saramago, questioned about this incident in 1991, commented: "The newspaper had a certain line and could not be turned into a kind of free tribune where everybody could say whatever they pleased." With the failure of the Communist coup, Mr. Saramago was forced to leave journalism.

He never left his communist ideology. Last Wednesday, hours before he received his Nobel, Mr. Saramago spoke at a seminar during the Frankfurt Book Fair, on the topic "Being a Communist Author Today." Clearly a double standard reigns in Stockholm and elsewhere. Nobody would sponsor a seminar on "Being a Fascist Author Today," least of all at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

The Swedish Academy is using the Nobels in literature for the same end to which their Norwegian colleagues have committed themselves by awarding the Peace Prize to such unregenerate leftists as the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (1997), Timorese guerrilla supporters Ximenes Belo and Ramos Horta (1996) and Joseph Rotblat of the Pugwash Conferences (1995). The message is clear: The snobs of the Scandinavian academies, secure in their wealth and power, remain doggedly faithful to their leftist fantasies.