Too Soon To Tell From the Introduction, by Thomas Farber: During late 1979 and early 1980, I wrote and recorded a series of "commentaries" for National Public Radio's All Things Considered, eight of which are included here. If I understood producer Deborah Amos correctly, each week I was to discuss some aspect of life in California for approximately three minutes. Since 1964, when I ftrst came West, I've suffered many an attack of bicoastalitis, my chief symptom a terrible need to span the distance between Massachusetts and California. My early stories, I'm quite sure, were in effect letters home, a description of what I thought I'd found, rendered in the tongue of what I imagined to be the world I'd left behind. It turns out that the past stayed right with me, if only because it was too far away to take for granted. I say this though now, late in the second decade of my life in California, I frequently think that geographical distance is too sheer a level of explanation, no more than an intervening variable, so to speak. And yet. Rereading these sagas of life on the material plane, I'm struck by how often I return to the theme of two coasts/two worlds. I insist on the differences, if only in the name of reconciliation. Perhaps, years ago, I should have headed for Paris or Peoria. A final note. When I taped these stories I often found that cadences viable on the page proved murder to read aloud. I got in the habit, each time I recorded, of altering what I'd written-simplifying sentences, cutting words. Here, however, I've presented the original text. I say this only in case you happen to read one of these pieces aloud and- terror of terrors-- find yourself stumbling over a penultimate polysyllable. This is Tom Farber in .... Berkeley, California April,1981 ©Thomas Farber, 1981 Critical Praise
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