San Francisco in fiction

About this book

The twelve essays included here explore the relationship between place and prose - between San Francisco the city and San Francisco the territory of fiction. From the Gold Rush times of Mark Twain and Bret Harte, through the Prohibition Era of Dashiell Hammett to the Beat days of Jack Kerouac and the present works of writers like Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, and Arturo Islas, San Francisco has been blessed with great writers who have given life to the land in their fiction. These essays engage the history and geography, ethnic, gender, and class conflicts, and stylistic range of the fiction. They demonstrate how authors as various as Jack London, Gertrude Atherton, Frank Norris, William Saroyan, James D. Houston, Joan Didion, and Wallace Stegner have re-created and revised our understanding of this region.