Fresno Bee, CA
April 12 2009
Fresno author Mark Arax weaves tales of California in his new book
Sunday, Apr. 12, 2009
By Rick Bentley / The Fresno Bee
Mark Arax spent 14 years driving the dusty roads of the central San
Joaquin Valley as a writer for the Los Angeles Times. His beat was the
farms, businesses, bars, and anywhere else locals were willing to
share their tales.
It was the Fresno native’s job to dig beneath the soil that had been
cultivated over the decades with so much blood and sweat.
He had to see peer intently through mirages of this arid valley to get
a clearer picture of the people and the land.
Arax, an Armenian-American, left the Los Angeles Times in 2007. Longer
versions of some of the stories he wrote while still at the newspaper,
along with some original snapshots of this land’s people, are in his
new book, "West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders and Killers
in the Golden State" (Public Affairs, $26.95).
"I wanted to write a book about California as a whole," he says. "I
didn’t exactly know the shape or the form. I think the shape found me
in the middle of it."
The book, a collection of his writings about the diverse peoples of
California, focuses on stories that unfolded from 2004 to 2009. During
that period, Arax dealt with his own major life-changing events: his
oldest child moving off to college; the loss of his newspaper job; an
answer finally being found regarding the murder of his father in 1972.
Arax, who is involved in a book-signing tour that will take him up and
down the central San Joaquin Valley, answered a few questions about
the book, his life and the Valley.
Here are excerpts from that conversation:
Question: You were writing this book at the same time the murder of
your father was solved. Did that have any impact on the stories you
decided to tell in this book?
Answer: My family history is present in every one of the pieces. Even
in the pieces where I never appear, at least not visibly. What I was
trying to do was this conflation of voices. I was trying to do
reportage, essay, memoir and combine it all together so you get a
piece like the Home Front where all of a sudden I pop up out of the
narrative as a way of informing that story. My personal history and
family history are everywhere in those stories.
How important to your writing is your personal history in the area?
So many folks who try to write about California from New York or the
East Coast fly in and fly out. They are playing with all of these
stereotypes and tropes of California. What I try to do is write a book
about California in which there wasn’t a single wildfire, earthquake,
mudslide. I wanted to write a book that really dug into the soil of
the place.
What is your fascination with the history here?
The past is never really the past. If you listen close enough, you’ll
hear on the land the echoes of families, of harvests. This is a place
where I can go out to a vineyard near Weed Patch and walk in the same
fields where my grandfather worked.
How hard was it to keep your professional distance when dealing with
some of the emotional stories?
To me, the notion of journalistic objectivity is kind of a false
premise. To me, as a journalist, our obligation is to be fair to the
issue and fair to the search. But the idea we are automatons, on the
outside looking in, is a false notion.
Could you have written similar stories in other states?
No. This state, the Valley, is a dream for storytellers. Look at the
tales that have played out here. You have these big stories that play
out on this big land. This is an epic landscape.
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