Famous All Over Town as a work of history - Essay Example

John Gregory Dunne, who exposed the truth about Danny Santiago in his article published in the New York Review of Books said that Daniel James had written using a pseudonym to overcome his writers block. Daniel James was not a Mexican American as was presumed by his book about the Chicanos, but a WASP from a well to do family of Kansas. Pseudonymous writing is fairly common in literature, and Famous All Over Town is , according to Dunne, nothing but a Bildungsroman. It is too much to expect historical accuracy or authenticity from the book.

The inbuilt bias and prejudices of the writer can also be seen in the book, making it unacceptable as a book on the history of California. Danny Santiago studied in Andover and majored in Ancient Greek from Yale. After working in the family business for some time, he became a Hollywood screenwriter. He worked with Charlie Chaplin when he made his seminal movie, “The Great Dictator.” James joined the Communist Party for a brief time and left it in 1948. Because of his leftist leanings, he was subjected to a lot of pressure.

In 1951 he refused to cooperate with HUAC , and he was blacklisted by Hollywood which resulted in a writers block. Proximity to the subject usually helps in understanding the subject, but not always so. The missionaries who came to the San Francisco Bay area had great proximity to the Ohlone Indians who inhabited the area at the time, but in spite of close contact with the Ohlones for decades, the prominent missionaries like Father Junipero Serra failed to understand them. James and his wife did social work among the Chicanos for more than three decades.

Their relationship with the Chicanos began in 1948, when they visited an interracial camp, and James was invited to form a Mexican type Posada in East Los Angeles. Through the next thirty five years , the couple formed and nurtured teen clubs for