Central Casting for a ‘Literary Journey’

HIGHWAY 99: A Literary Journey Through California’s Great Central Valley edited by Stan Yogi (Heyday Books, $16, paperback, photos).

Off and on, I’ve lived in California for nearly 40 years and never spent more than a few days in the Central Valley. I suspect that’s not an uncommon proportion of time for many Californians. Yet as much as the more storied coastal and mountain peripheries, this 450-mile agricultural heartland shapes the state’s facts and mystique.

William Saroyan, who has extensively chronicled Fresno’s Armenian community, is perhaps the best known Central Valley-inspired writer. But as this “literary journey” shows, there have been many others. Luis Valdez, Joan Didion, Philip Levine, John Muir, Richard Rodriguez, John Steinbeck and Bill Barich are among the contributors to this collection.

“Highway 99” is a rich mix of poetry, fiction and journalism. It includes journal entries from early settlers, excerpts from plays, pieces of books. All speak from and about the Central Valley. The works are in roughly chronological order and reflect changing patterns of immigration and economics.

One wonderful pairing begins with an excerpt from John Muir’s book, “Mountains of California,” published in 1894: “The great central plain of California, during the months of March, April and May, was one smooth, continuous bed of honey-bloom, so marvelously rich that, in walking from one end of it to the other, a distance of more than 400 miles, your foot would press about a hundred flowers at every step.”

It concludes with a Muir-inspired Gary Snyder poem that provides a ‘90s perspective:

“Down the Great Central Valley’s

blossoming almond orchard acres

lines of tree-trunks shoot a glance through

as the rows flash by--

And the ground is covered with

cement culverts standing on end,

house-high & six feet wide culvert after culvert as far as you can see . . . “

MONASTERIES OF GREECE by Chris Hellier, photographs by Francesco Venturi (TaurisParke Books, $50).

More substance than the usual coffee-table book. Hellier discusses the roots of the monastic movement, its heyday in the Middle Ages and its precipitous decline after the Islamic conquest of Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1453. Of the 200 or so monasteries still surviving in modern Greece, Hellier and Venturi pay particular attention to those on the northern Mt. Athos peninsula and those perching on rocky pinnacles in the Meteora area of Thessaly. Many of the buildings are travel-poster famous; all are wonders of Byzantine or Medieval architecture.

HAUNTED PLACES: The National Directory by Dennis William Hauck (Penguin, $15.95, paperback). SUPERNATURAL BRITAIN: A Guide to Britain’s Most Haunted Places by Peter Hough (Piatkus, $14.95, paperback).

Updated edition of this state-by-state guide to places where, as Hauck says in the introduction, “events occur beyond our ability to explain them.” Mansions stalked by headless apparitions, cemeteries lighted with ghostly candles, lonely roads used for UFO runways--it’s a comprehensive and scary list sure to delight “X-Files” fans. Hough’s guide offers a more historical/literary take--recounting ghoulish legends and discussing places featured in horror stories--though he too gives wide-eyed credence to UFO sightings.

Quick trips:

CENTRAL & SOUTH AMERICA BY ROAD: 4WD, Motorbike, Bicycle, Truck by Pam Ascanio (Bradt, $16.95, paperback, maps). Bradt specializes in out-of-the-way places (how many publishers cover Ethiopia?) with a sub-specialty in Central and South America. Information is pretty general; no detailed itineraries. The maps are sketchy. Also new this year is Bradt’s “Backpacking in Central America” guide.

PORTRAIT OF THE PANAMA CANAL by William Friar (Graphic Arts Center Publishing, $14.95, photos, paperback). A short essay on the history of the canal with lots of archival and modern-day photographs. According to Friar, ships have made about 800,000 crossings of the canal since it opened in 1914 and today only Panamanian and Colombian navy ships get through free. All others, even U.S. aircraft carriers steaming to the Persian Gulf, must pay a toll.

A READER’S GUIDE TO WRITERS’ BRITAIN by Sally Varlow (Prion Books, $24.95, paperback, photos). Divides the island into nine parts (London, Wales and the Marches, the Midlands and Cotswolds, etc.) and makes numerous literary landscape connections within each. We learn, for example, that J.R.R. Tolkien’s childhood home of Warwickshire was not unlike his fictional Shire. Too chatty to be helpful; more of a fun browse.

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES: A Walking Guide by Robert D. Herman (City Vista Press, $13.95, paperback, maps). Rather colorless guide that’s heavy on architecture, public art and history, light on directions and routes.

Books to Go appears the second and fourth week of every month.