California Rewritten: A Journey Through the Golden State’s New Literature

Knopf executive editor Freeman (Dictionary of the Undoing) delivers a wide-ranging if occasionally head-scratching critical survey of contemporary California literature. His selections, each of which is discussed in standalone essays, range from histories to prize-winning literary novels, poetry collections, and bestselling mysteries, and provide a panoramic view of works inspired by the Golden State. At times, Freeman’s enthusiasm can be excessive, as when he contends in consecutive entries that both Reyna Grande’s The Distance Between Us and Elaine Castillo’s America Is Not the Heart should be taught regularly in schools, and makes grandiose literary comparisons (“[Rachel] Kushner is our Genet and our new Dostoevsky”). The collection is ultimately less than the sum of its parts; such critical assessments as calling Paul Beatty’s The Sellout “easily one of the best LA novels ever written,” feel somewhat diminished when Rachel Khong’s Goodbye, Vitamin is subsequently categorized as “one of the finest meditations in California writing on how families live among, make, and depend on memories,” and Kushner’s The Mars Room is named “one of the great American novels about time” and “quietly one of the best American novels on stalking.” Readers will be best served by dipping selectively into this impassioned tribute. (Oct.)