GOLDEN STATE OF MIND
ACCOMPANIES THE BBC RADIO 4 SERIES THE CALIFORNIAN CENTURY
In the late 1940s, a Los Angeles newspaper declared that California was “an unarticulated collection of factors looking for a common denominator”. Around the same time one of the state’s great chroniclers, Carey McWilliams, coined the phrase “the great exception” to describe a place that was subdivided by north and south, by newcomers and carpetbaggers, and by a rural hinterland distinct from its metropolitan centres. This was the California of the mid-20th century: a state not yet fully formed or organically unified, yet one powerful and influential enough to claim a regional identity all of its own, separate from its other western neighbours.
How had this California come to be, nearly a century since its incorporation into the Union – and from where was unity expected to emerge as the century progressed? It was California’s exceptionalism that in time promoted its harmony, and both of these traits were consolidated by the global achievements of two industries: Hollywood and Silicon Valley.
Imagining the future
The Californian playwright Luis Valdez recently expounded the maxim that “the future belongs to those [in the state] who can imagine it”. California was a place of ideas: somewhere for outsiders who harboured dreams of fame and fortune, and who knew what the future might look like in the Golden State.
