In 1971, Powell—once the Chief Librarian at the University of California, Los Angeles—published a compendium of essays that originally appeared in the auto club magazine, Westways and later revised. Powell was a gifted writer and a dedicated scholar of California authors. Each essay in his collection, and there are 31 of them, focuses on a single work of California writing, including works by Robinson Jeffers, John Steinbeck, Mary Austin, John Muir, Raymond Chandler, Helen Hunt Jackson, and a host of less well-known but mostly deserving writers. "This book," writes Powell, "is for reading, not reference, and I hope it will find readers of all ages." As a result, the collection serves as a wonderful, thoughtful, and highly readable introduction to California writing for the newcomer and a welcome reminder, for those familiar with writing about our state, about what makes our literature so memorable.

Certainly Powell's book will strike some readers as idiosyncratic. His definition of a classic—a long-lived book with style, "a mysterious fusion of fact and imagination, of vision and vigor, present in a writer's mastery of language"—is not only impressionistic, it's reactionary in our age of social constructivist values. But perhaps it's better to see Powell's definition of a classic as a starting place, not an ending place, a challenge to us to think about how and whether cultural values endure. In 1972, reviewer John T. Flanagan, writing for Arizona and the West, put it this way: "In these days when literary critics are by turns exhibitionists, pedestrian textual scholars, or symbol hunters, one can sincerely welcome a somewhat old-fashioned book for its enthusiasm and its frankly impressionistic judgments."

Unlike a literary anthology that seeks primarily to represent a diversity of writing, Powell's book seeks to lead you to them and to encourage you to consider them wholly. But Powell's list of 31 works not only leads readers to these "classic" texts, it inspires debate and delight in talking about why Powell's list is so inadequate. Odd reason for recommending a book, but there it is.

California Classics includes essays on: ______________________