San Diego is no slouch when it comes to colorful characters, bigger-than-life biographies, hard-core history, and famous fiction.
Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler's classic detective, spent most of his time in the literary Los Angeles of the 1940s. But the last Marlowe mystery, Playback (Vintage Books, 1988), includes a beautiful woman who hides out in "Esmeralda" (actually La Jolla), a coastal town north of downtown San Diego, where Chandler spent his last 13 years of life.
Coronado also figures in L. Frank Baum's Oz books, including The Wizard of Oz (Everyman's Library, 1992). The author, who lived in Coronado, based some of his descriptions of the Emerald City on the community, particularly the Hotel Del. Another San Diego local, Theodor Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss), wrote many of his much-loved children's books while living in La Jolla. The Sneetches (Random House, 1961), in fact, is a poke at snobby La Jollans.
Design buffs should check out the beautiful coffee-table books highlighting the career of architect Irving Gill: Marvin Rand's Irving J. Gill: Architect, 1870-1936 (Gibbs Smith, 2006) and Thomas S. Hines's Irving Gill and the Architecture of Reform: A Study in Modernist Architectural Culture (Monacelli, 2000). A protégé of Louis Sullivan, Gill became one of California's most important architects, whose works remain local landmarks.
Mission San Luis Rey in northern San Diego County inspired the setting for Helen Hunt Jackson's 1884 novel, Ramona: A Story (Signet, 2002). A love story that holds up even with today's jaded audiences, Jackson's tale incorporates a changing California (the fading Spanish order, the decline of Native American tribes, the arrival of white settlers) into its enduring drama. The Estudillo House in Old Town is sometimes called "Ramona's House" because it so closely resembles the vivid description in the book.
