This page contains materials
intended to facilitate class discussion
(excerpts from readings, outlines of issues,
links to resources, etc.). The materials
are not necessarily the same as the instructor's
teaching notes and are not designed to represent
a full exposition or argument. This page
is subject to revision as the instructor
finalizes preparation. (Last revised
6/8/07
)
Preliminary Class
Business
Read Califia. Also
available for use at/from the following
locations:
South Hall 2509 during Transcriptions
TA drop-in tech support hours)
Califia : a full-length work of
"electronic literature" that
helps tie up the major themes of the course.
Luesebrink's previous
work. Califia's technical
roots in Hypercard and Toolbook.
The work lies at the cusp between
the early technical generations
of electronic literature and new
technical possibilities. Luesebrink's
current work in Director (preview
of
The
Book of Going Forth by Day)
Continuities
between Califia and themes in our
course:
A work about media and communication
(in California).
A work about information, media,
and business (in California).
"At the end of the twentieth
century, the long predicted
convergence of the media, computing
and telecommunications into
hypermedia is finally happening. . . .
At this crucial juncture, a
loose alliance of writers,
hackers, capitalists and artists
from the West Coast of the
USA have succeeded in defining
a heterogeneous orthodoxy for
the coming information age:
the Californian Ideology."
Yet precisely because this is the most
contemporary of the answers the novel
gives about what California is "about,"
it is also the most superficial. Califia
also tells us that to understand our contemporary
gold rush we need to dig under the surface
into deeper historical layers. The "silicon
rush" that all the Seekers and Builders
of present-day California are after was
not the first such "rush" upon
which the new world of California was
built.
Embedding the modern story
in real ground was important;
the search for historical certainty
is best done by "mapping"
in a literal as well as a metaphorical
sense. As Philip J. Ethington
writes, Los Angeles suffers
from "unknowability": "Influential
writers on postmodernity such
as Fredric Jameson have named
specific sites within Los Angeles
as evidence of a new condition,
in which history itself is effaced
by the 'depthlessness' that
characterizes a core condition
of the 'world space of multinational
capital'–the ultimate
source of ongoing exploitation
and alienation. Recent
scholarship has singled out
Los Angeles as either unique
among cities, or especially
representative of new conditions
of urban life and globalism." ("Los
Angeles and the Problem of Urban
Historical Knowledge.")
Califia,
with its careful mapping of
places, excavation of the
sediments of forgotten layers
and observation of remembered
outcroppings, records of the
topographical and topological
features, is a defense against
such erasure. The "depthlessness"
that has been noted by some
historians and cultural theorists
is one aspect of Southern
California. But the impression
of shallowness is also the
result of looking with a traditional
orientation for hierarchies
of meaning in a place that
is constantly shifting, creating
a new surface. There is something
underneath, but the history
of Los Angeles tends to reveal
itself through a multiplicity
of approaches. And, as Augusta
observes (The Journey West),
"the past is always with
us."
Imagine, therefore,
that what we see on the surface
of California in Califia is just
the top of a deep set of geological
layers. The story of Califia—narrated
in different ways by the three main
characters (Augusta, Kaye, Calvin)—is
a pilgrimage plot in which horizontal
motion,
as in any pilgrimage, stands in for
a vertical quest. In olden pilgrimages,
the quest was for transcendence on
high. In Califia, the quest
is to mine deep below the surface
of California for the real treasure:
historical meaning and the identities
they bequeath.
What are the layers of meaning that the
characters mine as they follow their pilgrimage
across southern California in search of
treasure—the ultimate treasure being
their identities?
Layer 1: Califia
is about the history of building of California
(especially LA)
It is appropriate to use the word "pilgrimage"
in regard to the Califia because,
put one way the novel is about the vision-quest,
the dream-quest that built California
and Los Angeles—or "Paradise":
California, according to the novel,
arose as an act of imagination
California was the dream of the Seekers
,
Players ,
and Builders
California is the land of gold, water,
energy, media—and, most recently—silicon,
all empires built half on reality and
half on dream (i.e., the crazy mix of
illusion and desire and addiction that
was the Spanish and American grab for
land, the gold rush, the oil rush, the
water wars, the newspaper and Hollywood
empires, etc.)
Compare such other works about the building
of California as:
Or compare Sergio Leone's film about
the building of the West: Once
Upon a Time in the West (1968),
1 | 2
Layer 2: Califia
is about the history of media, and history
as media
Given the fact that so much of California
is made out of the stuff of dream and
imagination, one of the empires upon which
the state was built is especially important
to Califia: media. Ultimately,
the novel is less interested in gold than
it is in the media that tell us about
the rush for gold (and for "Paradise"
in general). It is media that is the real
treasure trove that the novel seeks. We
might even say that in the novel it is
a history of media that enacts
the history of California:
Ancestral
Environment of Signs
landmarks
Oral Culture
oral culture
Numeracy and Early
Literacy
accounts
and deeds, etc.
genealogical
lists
and charts
Manuscript Culture
manuscripts,
letters, journals, etc.
Print Culture
newspaper
clippings, legal documents,
etc.
Audiovisual Culture
photos
film
music (e.g.,
Grateful Dead)
Digital Culture
digital
media (e.g., GIS maps)
Calvin's "docudramas"
For the Docudramas I have relied
upon actual documents, sometimes
slightly altered or recreated. . . . As
it happens, I am a fifth-generation
Californian; my predecessors
lived at the margins of the
historical events in Califia.
They also saved a great deal
of the paperwork from the past
-- everything from letters
to worthless stock certificates
to photos of the 1913 hot air
balloon show. Where it was
feasible, I "doctored" my
own family documents and photographs
to create the generations of
the Summerlands, Beveridges,
and Lugos. When I ran out of
family photos, I adopted from
my friends (readers may be
interested to know that Ruben
Lugo, for example, is really
Kate Hayles' son, Jonathan).
I also borrowed liberally from
old family stories, my own
and others', as sources for
plot elements, character types.
Cf. Lev Manovich on "database vs. narrative":
the narrative of Califia is
a traversal of a database
(Opening
of Califia) 
