San Francisco - Alison Bing [18]
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe – his florid style is dated, but Wolfe had extraordinary presence of mind to capture tuning in, turning on and dropping out with Ken Kesey, the Merry Pranksters, the Grateful Dead and Hell’s Angels.
Fiction
Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin – the 1976 San Francisco Chronicle serial follows true San Francisco characters: pot-growing landladies of mystery, ever-hopeful Castro club-goers and wide-eyed Midwestern arrivals.
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick – the bestselling Berkeley sci-fi writer presents the ultimate what-if scenario: imagine San Francisco c 1962 if Japan and Nazi Germany had won WWII.
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan – the stories of four Chinese-born women and their American-born daughters are woven into a textured history of immigration and aspiration in San Francisco’s Chinatown.
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett – in this classic noir novel, private eye Sam Spade risks his reputation on a case involving an elusive redhead, a gold statuette, the Holy Roman Empire and an unholy cast of thugs.
Martin Eden by Jack London – San Francisco’s first literary star started out as the Prince of the Oyster Pirates, a waterfront bad boy who got by on his wits in this semi-autobiographical account.
Graphic Novels
Ghost World by Daniel Clowes – the Oakland-based graphic novelist’s sleeper hit follows recent high-school grads Enid and Rebecca as they make plans, make do, grow up and grow apart.
Long Tail Kitty by Lark Pien – San Francisco cartoonist/architect Pien brings the poetry of The Little Prince and the charm of Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away to her long-tailed tales of a heavenly cat.
American Born Chinese by Gene Yang – a young-adult graphic novel with smarts and heart, combining Monkey King fables with two teenagers’ stories of assimilation and alienation.
* * *
Return to beginning of chapter
LITERATURE
Bookish flirts and over-the-shoulder-readers, you’ve come to the right city. You’ll find a city full of people who become coquettish when they see a favorite author being read, and have kinked necks from craning to read the books of fellow bus riders. The way to a San Franciscan’s heart is definitely through the books they adore. San Francisco buys more books per capita than any other US city, hoards three times as many library books as the national average, and has more writers per capita than any other US city. So should you invite a date over, expect those bookshelves to be scrutinized, and plant some suitably local titles on your shelves.
To cover your bases, a solid local bookshelf should include plenty of poetry (Beat authors obligatory), some satire, a graphic novel and a noir, nonfiction essays about the San Francisco scene, and at least one novel by a Bay Area author. San Francisco’s Kenneth Rexroth popularized haiku here back in the 1950s, and San Franciscans still enjoy nothing more than a few well-chosen words – the fog seems to lift with a few solar syllables supplied by Berkeley-based US poet laureate Robert Hass. Ambrose Bierce and Mark Twain set the San Francisco standard for sardonic wit early on, but recently, Bay Area graphic novelists like Daniel Clowes have added a twist to this tradition with finely drawn, deadpan behavioral studies. For more, don’t miss the Cartoon Art Museum.
People-watching rivals reading as a preferred San Francisco pastime, and close observation of antics that would seem bizarre elsewhere pays off in stranger-than-fiction nonfiction – hence Hunter S Thompson’s gonzo journalism and Joan Didion’s core-shaking truth-telling. Many San Franciscans seem like characters in a novel, and the reverse is also true. After a few days here, you might feel like you’ve seen Armistead Maupin’s bright-eyed, corn-fed Castro newbies, Dashiell Hammet’s mysterious redheads, and Amy Tan’s American-born daughters explaining slang to their