California Literary Places

Michelle E. Battelman

California may be best known as the birthplace of Hollywood and thousands of movies and TV shows, but it all starts with the written word. Here are just a few of the many literary places to find in California.

Theodor Seuss Geisel

National Reading Month is observed in March in honor of Dr. Seuss’s birthday. Known as Dr. Seuss, Geisel (1904–1991) lived for a long time in the community of La Jolla in San Diego. Millions of children have learned to read thanks to Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat, and Green Eggs and Ham.

UC San Diego Geisel Library

9500 Gilman Drive,

La Jolla, CA 92093

More than 8,500 items make up the Dr. Seuss collection at the Geisel Library in La Jolla. This is the world’s largest collection of Seuss items, filled with original manuscripts, drawings, notebooks, photographs and more. The library was renamed after Seuss in 1995.

John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) was born in the Californian farming town of Salinas. Steinbeck lived in Pacific Grove from 1930 to 1936, and his most famous works were written and set in Monterey County, as well as in Salinas and parts of the San Joaquin Valley.

In 1940, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Grapes of Wrath (1939).

Other notable works include East of Eden (1952), The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Of Mice and Men (1937), and Cannery Row (1945).

In 1962 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

One of his last published works was “Journey with Charlie”, an account of the journey he made in 1960 to rediscover America.

Exhibits at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas include the camper in which Steinbeck made the cross-country journey described in Travels with Charlie.
Exhibits at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas include the camper in which Steinbeck made the cross-country journey described in Travels with Charlie. Stock Foto Visit California.

National Steinbeck Center

Main street, 1,

Salinas, CA 93901

www.steinbeck.org

Open from Wednesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 17:00. His “Steinbeckiana” includes the “Rocinante”, the camper in which Steinbeck made the cross-country journey described in Travels with Charlie.

Steinbeck House

Central Ave., 132,

Salinas, CA 93901

This Victorian Queen Anne mansion was the birthplace and childhood home of author John Steinbeck. In August 2000, the house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The house is open as a restaurant from Tuesday to Saturday from 11:30 to 14:00. The Best Cellar gift shop is open from Tuesday to Saturday from 11:00 to 15:00.

In 1958, the street that Steinbeck described as "cannery row" in his novel, once called Ocean View Avenue, was renamed the city of Monterey.
In 1958, the street that Steinbeck described in his novel as “Cannery Row”, once called Ocean View Avenue, was renamed the City of Monterey. Stock Foto Visit California.

cannery row

700 cannery row,

Monterey, CA 93940

In 1958, the street Steinbeck described as “Cannery Row” in his novel, once called Ocean View Avenue, was renamed Cannery Row after the novel. Instead of canned fish, the street has been transformed to include waterfront hotels, fine arts, restaurants, boutiques, artisan shops and boutiques.

San Francisco: Literary Center

Before there were hippies, there were beatniks. The Beat Movement, also called the Beat generation, was a social and literary movement that began in the 1950s in bohemian art communities, including San Francisco’s North Beach. Notable beat writers included Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Alan Watts, Neil Cassidy, Gregory Corso, and others.

Beat Museum

540 Broadway,

San Francisco, California

www.kerouac.com

Open from Thursday to Monday from 10:00 to 19:00

The Beat Museum is home to an extensive collection of Beat memorabilia, including original manuscripts, rare books, letters, personal items, and cultural heritage items.

Cafe Trieste

st. Vallejo, 601,

San Francisco, CA 94133

San Francisco’s historic Italian neighborhood of North Beach is a literary hub. Caffe Trieste, an espresso house that first opened its doors in 1956, quickly became a meeting place for the literary heavyweights of the beat generation, including Kerouac, Ginsberg, Watts and others.

Bookstore “City Lights”

261 Columbus Avenue,

San Francisco, CA 94133

Open Monday to Thursday from 11:00 to 20:00, Friday to Sunday from 11:00 to 21:00.

One of the most famous literary landmarks in the United States is City Lights Books, an independent store and publishing company founded by beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 1953.

Cafe Vesuvio

255 Columbus Avenue,

San Francisco, CA 94133

www.vesuvio.com

This world famous saloon in San Francisco was first opened in 1948 and remains a historical monument of the beat generation. For over 70 years he has been serving cocktails to the literary avant-garde.

Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) was a major influence on the literary genre of the hard detective.

At least three of Chandler’s novels are considered masterpieces, including Farewell My Pretty (1940), The Woman in the Lake (1943), and The Long Goodbye (1953).

Chandler became a writer at the age of 44 after losing his job as an oil executive during the Great Depression.

His first novel, The Big Sleep, published in 1939, introduced the audience to the character of Philip Marlowe, the classic “tough” private detective who worked in the Los Angeles underworld of the 1930s-1950s.

Chandler’s books list over 100 recognizable places in Los Angeles, here are just a few.

Raymond Chandler Square

Raymond Chandler Square is located at the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Cahuenga in Hollywood. The fictional office of his fictional character, Philip Marlowe, was in the former Security Pacific Bank building at 6381 Hollywood Blvd., which Chandler named “The Cahuang Building”.

Musso & Frank Grill, now 103 years old, have long been a literary hangout in Hollywood.
Musso & Frank Grill, now 103 years old, have long been a literary hangout in Hollywood. Stock Foto Visit California.

Musso and Frank Grill

6667 Hollywood Boulevard,

Hollywood, CA 90028

Founded in 1919, this legendary classic steakhouse can be found not only in Chandler’s books, but in hundreds of books set in Los Angeles and Hollywood.

In addition, Musso & Frank was the favorite of many literary elites, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner.

Greystone Mansion ·

905 Loma Vista Drive,

Beverly Hills, CA 90210

www.greystonemansion.org

The luxurious Sternwood estate in The Big Dream is a replica of the real-life Greystone Mansion, built by the son of oil magnate Edward Doheny in 1927.

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