From Library Journal
This anthology features [edited] transcripts of conversations between art writer Isenberg (Making It Big, LJ 3/15/97) and 54 current or former West Coast artists, writers, actors, and composers in which they express their views of California and its affects on their lives and work. The commonality of living or having lived in the Golden State and the book's sheer number of interviews contribute to a more general, and perhaps unexpected, cumulative message: a defensive championing of the state's freer creative climate. Repeatedly, artists describe how the cultural and historical setting has permitted more experimentation than would be possible in New York. The whiff of regionalism here is not helped by the book's narrow Southern California bias, likely the result of Isenberg's L.A. Times reporter background. (Only a quarter of the artists come from north of Tehachapi.) The collection is saved by the interesting and eclectic variety of means with which these people have found their creative niches, as when Dave Brubeck explains the impact on his musical ear of the rhythms he heard (of horses, pumps) during his ranchland childhood. Although it fails to transcend its limitations, this is an illuminating book, best suited for West Coast and large art libraries.DDouglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L., CA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Longtime arts reporter Isenberg brings her fascination with California culture, which is as diverse and impressive as the state's spectacular landscapes, to this collection of more than 50 interviews with writers, painters and sculptors, actors, musicians, photographers, and architects. Because less than half are natives, many artists talk about California as a mecca, or frontier. Matters of race and ethnicity; politics, history, and the environment; and the effect of place on creativity also play a large part in these lively and succinct discussions. Isenberg's articulate and magnetic subjects include such inevitable participants as Joan Didion, Dave Brubeck, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, but she also presents sculptor Betye Saar, public muralist Judith Baca, playwright Luis Valdez, artist David Hockney, composer Michael Tilson Thomas, writer Maxine Hong Kingston, and, in the world of entertainment, Carol Burnett, Matt Groening, and Clint Eastwood. By interviewing artists of different generations, temperaments, and disciplines, Isenberg has created a vivid sampler of perspectives on California's unique and inspiring ambiance and its significant contribution to world culture. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM THE PUBLISHER

California has long nourished artists of all kinds. Its natural beauty, its history as a frontier, its traditions of embracing and accepting experimentation in culture, and even its weather, all combine to create an atmosphere of creativity that is quire different from anywhere else in America.

This is the first book to both celebrate California artists of all sorts and examine their relationship to their environment. It features more than 50 interviews with visual and performing artists, musicians, screenwriters, novelists, actors, and others. From Dave Brubeck's childhood on a Concord, CA, ranch to Clint Eastwood on his first memories of Carmel, to Louis Valdez's farmworkers' theater and Maxine Hon Kingston's writing of Chinese myth, these wide-ranging and revealing interviews shed fascinating light on the creative life in the land of plenty.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal