Joan Didion
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By: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> 20th Century -> 1960s
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Classics -> General AAS
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Essays -> General
Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 32
Average rating: 4.5 of 5
Yeats, The Grateful Dead, and All That 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.
This book starts out citing W.B. Yeats and Peggy Lee, co-equals in esteem and regard. Yeats and his slouching towards Bethlehem, "Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the center cannot hold...And What rough best, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" and this lovely gem from Miss Peggy, "I learned courage from Buddha, Jesus, Lincoln, Einstein, and Cary Grant." And what a unique dichotomy to start out a unique collection of essays uniquely told, from a voice risen above voices of that time--Joan Didion.
This book has a little story to it worth telling. I found myself in Boston of all places in the Harvard Book Store (no affiliation I guess to the better known little school near by). A bookstore staff member points out her recommendations from the staff recommendations section. It turns out she grew up in California parents of some freerer spirited, macrobiotic, driven by the very power of flowers types. This book store maven also goes to the little Harvard school and she recommends Joan Didion as one of her very fave reads of all fave reads. I having spent time in Cali myself and thinking that San Francisco is America's greatest city and having always been vexed, perplexed, and intrigued by that 60's counter-culture period in our country couldn't resist picking up the book...well picking it up from Amazon. Where else would one in their right mind buy books after all?
Joan Didion, as it turns out, is a phenomenal writer. She hails from Sacramento and wasn't in the thick of experiencing the 60's (aka Hunter Thompson) but a passionate 3rd person observer. She writes as if she is reporting on the age, place, and times but between the lines you pick up the pathos of these words, "Michael (a three-year old) burned his arm though, which is probably why Sue Ann was so jumpy when she happened to see him chewing on an electric cord. 'You'll fry like rice,' she screamed...they didn't notice Sue Ann screaming at Michael because they were in the kitchen trying to retrieve some very good Moroccan hash which had dropped down through a floorboard damaged in the fire." And things fell apart.
But "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," isn't about the Haight-Ashbury district scene alone. Didion's writing extends to a love letter for John Wayne, personal reflections (which are far from self-absorbent as personal reflections can trend), and a witty eye that takes it all in unflinchingly, bracingly, and honest. Here's a little nugget from "On Self Respect," "...it is difficult in the extreme to continue fancying oneself Cathy in Wuthering Heights with one's head in a Food Fair bag. There is a similar case for all the small disciplines, unimportant in themselves; imagine maintaining any kind of swoon, commiserative or carnal, in a cold shower."
I'll be a faithful reader of Didion for many moons to come. Thank you Harvard Book Store girl...thank you Amazon. Don't miss out on Didion dear readers. ...mmw
Editorial Review:
The first nonfiction work by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era, Slouching Towards Bethlehem remains, forty years after its first publication, the essential portrait of America— particularly California—in the sixties. It focuses on such subjects as John Wayne and Howard Hughes, growing up a girl in California, ruminating on the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, and, especially, the essence of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture.
