california, n.All

California is a tragic country, like Palestine, like every Promised Land.

California is a place where one loses one point of IQ every year.

California is a place where the only thing people read is the license plate in front of them.

California is once-and-future America, and much that is newest and biggest in this country, both its best and worst, is concentrated along our western edge.

California is an Italy without its art.

California is a place where the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things better work here, because here is where we run out of continent.

California is a state where blondes are the state flower.

California is a place whose beaches are sun-drenched but so cold you come home with a frostbitten suntan.