Californians have always been inordinately interested in ideas of California. You could draft a long list of people who have devoted their writing, art, or film careers to refining different versions of a California narrative.
The state is easy to romanticize because it is a frontier, as about a million people have noted, but mainly because everything is so big. It’s tempting to find evidence of the sublime in huge things. These days I mostly think of California as the place that made Sasha Grey possible.
Good point. Especially when compared to New Yorkers, who never devote their writing, art, or film careers to refining different versions of a New York narrative. Unless you count, you know, Marty Scorcese, Robert DeNiro, Woody Allen, Diane Arbus, Marv Albert, Jerry Seinfeld, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jay-Z, Andy Warhol, Spike Lee, Derek Jeter (one could argue), Stephen Sondheim, JD Salinger, Lou Reed, Eugene O’Neill, Harvey Keitel, Nora Ephron, the Beat poets, Art Spiegelman, Alfred Stieglitz, John Cassavetes, Basquiat, Neil Simon, and your blog… off the top of my head.
I lived in upstate New York for 4 years and New York City for 2 years. Still though, these days, I mostly think of New York as the place that made Rudy Giuliani possible.
