Hasty Generalization from Insufficient Literary Evidence

Conjecture: “The California novelist writes about freedom. The Southern novelist writes about redemption.”

Discussion: It could certainly be that Joan Didion and Philip K. Dick are not representative of California novelists in general. But, supposing that they do represent the Spirit of California, we might reasonably conclude that California exists somewhere between image and reality, but always in the present moment. The various protagonists struggle to find a place for themselves in a fluid reality: people are always moving, changing, planning, making promises. And, of course, what everyone wants is freedom, but, because there is such a stark divide between Individual and Society, freedom is far out of reach. On the other hand, Southern writers, such as Walker Percy and Thomas Wolfe, write of encumbered selves: people who do not try to shed or forget their compromised roles, but rather to redeem their dark inheritances, to find a way to accept their given identities in good conscience.

Caveat: This could be way, way off the mark.

Further Questions: What about Northerners? Midwesterners? Canadians?