The California Dream

Got a call yesterday from Kathy Johnson at San Francisco State University. She asked if I would participate in a Fall course called "California: The Promise vs. the Reality in the 2006 Election." My mission, should I decide to accept it, is to offer a 20-25 minute presentation on The California Dream. I said count me in. My SF State class last semester (California Culture) filled my head with thoughts and images on that topic. I'm not sure how many Gidget movies I can cover in 20 minutes, but I accept the challenge.

F. Scott Fitzgerald--and Frances Ring

Carey McWilliams was a huge F. Scott Fitzgerald fan. Only Mencken had more influence over the young McWilliams's imagination.

So it was with some pleasure that I visited with Frances Kroll Ring this morning over the telephone. As editor of Westways, Frances persuaded McWilliams to contribute some pieces in the late 1970s--McWilliams had written a regular column in the 1930s--but Frances was also F. Scott Fitzgerald's secretary in the last year of his life. I'm looking forward to reading her book, Against the Current: As I Remember F. Scott Fitzgerald, which tells that story. The book was reissued last year by Figueroa Press and inspired the film Last Call with Jeremy Irons, Sissy Spacek, and Neve Campbell (as Frances).

By the way, I got Frances's name from Doug Dutton, of Dutton's Brentwood Bookstore, whom I met at the Bonnie Cashin lecture at UCLA. Thanks, Doug!

The NLG Connection

I had lunch with Marjorie Cohn last week in Escondido. Marjorie is a law professor, online columnist, and regular guest on Pacifica radio. She's also the President Elect of the National Lawyers Guild, which was founded in 1937 as a progressive alternative to the American Bar Association. Carey McWilliams was an active member of the Guild from its inception. In fact, he was president of the Los Angeles chapter in 1943, when the Zoot Suit Riots and Sleepy Lagoon trial were making headlines.

The Guild had a tough time during the McCarthy era. Morris Ernst, who had been counsel for the ACLU during the 1940s, led a controversial (and unsuccessful) attempt to purge the Guild of its Communist members. It later came out that Ernst was an FBI informant. The Guild was also a factor when McCarthy began to investigate the army. Army counsel Joseph Welch represented a young colleague at his law firm who was also a member of the Guild, which McCarthy regarded as the legal bulwark of the Communist Party. Welch had made a deal with Roy Cohn, McCarthy's counsel, to remain silent on Cohn's draft status if Cohn didn't mention the Guild. When McCarthy unknowingly broke the deal, Welch issued his famous riposte: "Have you no decency, sir, at long last?" See American Prophet, pp. 205-09, for more.

The Lamont Family and Carey McWillams

It's amazing how American political genealogies work. Today Ned Lamont will press Joe Lieberman for his Senate seat in Connecticut. But yesterday I learned that Lamont is related to an FOC (Friend of Carey)--namely, Corliss Lamont, who co-founded the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee with McWilliams during the McCarthy era. Ned's great uncle was a longstanding board member of the ACLU but resigned when it didn't support him during an encounter with McCarthy's Senate committee. Another ECLC co-founder was Yale law professor Thomas Emerson, Hillary Clinton's mentor. For more, see American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams, pp. 198-200.

Manzanar--and Johnny Rosselli

I just returned from a long California loop--east to Yosemite and Tioga Pass, then south to Lone Pine, Big Bear, and San Diego, then north to Los Angeles and up the Central Valley to the Bay Area. My daughters and I stopped in Manzanar and took in the historical site dedicated to the evacuation and internment of the Japanese during the Second World War. Carey McWilliams demolished all the arguments for the internment in Prejudice (1944), but he was serving in state government (as chief of the Division of Immigration and Housing) when the order was carried out.

In Los Angeles, I had dinner with Charles Rappleye, author of All American Mafioso: The Johnny Rosselli Story (Doubleday, 1991). In the late 1930s, McWilliams helped bring down Willie Bioff, the labor racketeer who, like Rosselli, represented the Chicago mob. Charles's new book is Sons of Providence (Simon & Schuster, 2006), which tells the story of the two brothers who founded Brown University. Charles and I dined at Union Station, where McWilliams was feted by KPFK toward the end of his career.

SCQ Review

I just received a thoughtful review of American Prophet by Volker Janssen, a historian at Cal State Fullerton. Writing for Southern California Quarterly, Dr. Janssen calls the book "a comprehensive, highly readable profile of literary skill and political courage." (I read this to mean McWilliams's skill and courage, not the book's!) Very gratifying. Dr. Janssen specializes in the social, economic, and institutional history of California. For more on him and his work, see http://hss.fullerton.edu/history/facultystaff_files/Janssen.html.

Good Vibrations

Just returned from McWilliams country--always a pleasure. Victoria Steele said the UCLA event on Thursday was the best-attended Bonnie Cashin lecture they've had yet (!)

The KPCC interview also went well, I thought, but my brother Scott had some useful pointers for me afterward. He has plenty of media experience, so I listened carefully. Patt Morrison was as impressive in person as I expected--very astute, of course, and with her trademark chapeau, but also a great radio voice.

Rusty Harding at All Saints Pasadena organized an informal book talk on Friday night that I thoroughly enjoyed, and Michael Dawson pulled together a great group at his bookstore on Saturday. I could do that sort of circuit indefinitely--so many interesting people in their own right, and so many receptive to McWilliams and his achievement.

Another trippy part of the L.A. trip was an impromptu dinner with Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector, on the boardwalk in Venice. Jeff Norman, who works for P3 but is also organizing events for Ritter and others, put it together.

Local Color

A local blog, Sausalito by the Bay, picked up on the piece in San Francisco State's Campus Memo. (Sausalito is home to PoliPointPress, where I'm editorial director.) Here's the link:

http://sausalitobythebay.com/blog/the-single-finest-nonfiction

Lo-Cal Swing Redux

Here's the L.A. flapjaw schedule for American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams. Amaze and impress your friends with your knowledge of McWilliams and his achievement!

Thursday, June 15--Bonnie Cashin lecture, UCLA, 4 p.m. Open to public.
www.library.ucla.edu/special/scweb/cashin/lecture.htmSaturday.

Friday, June 16--Patt Morrison, KPCC, 89.3 FM, 2-3 p.m.

Friday, June 16--All Saints Church, Pasadena, 7:30 p.m.

June 17--Dawson's Book Shop, 535 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, 2:30 p.m. Open to public. www.dawsonbooks.com

Gunkist Oranges

Just read Gustavo Arellano's piece in the OC Weekly on the 1936 naranjero strike in Orange County. In the introduction to Fool's Paradise: A Carey McWilliams Reader, Gray Brechin notes that McWilliams "peeled back the giddy and gaudy orange-crate label of official state history to reveal the disturbing reality of what California is and has been." Citing McWilliams but also offering a fuller picture of the strike and its suppression, Gustavo does a little peeling himself.

http://www.ocweekly.com/news/news/gunkist-oranges/25266/