Joan Didion: American Author Challenge

Joan Didion was born December 5, 1934, in Sacramento, California. She is a novelist and essayist known for her lucid prose style and incisive depictions of social unrest and psychological fragmentation.
She worked seven years at Vogue, honing her writing craft. She then married author John Gregory Dunne. In 1968, she published her first work of nonfiction, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, a collection of magazine pieces about her experiences in California. She won the Pulitzer in 2005, for The Year of Magical Thinking, about the death of her husband.
She currently resides in an apartment on East 71st Street in New York City.

**This is part of our American Author Challenge 2018. This author will be read in January. The general discussion thread can be found right here:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/279501

My first Didion was Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays back in 2011. I really liked that collection and also enjoyed The Year of Magical Thinking, but failed to read any more of her work. Well, this is giving me that opportunity. I will start off with The White Album. I may follow it up with something else, maybe later in the year. Maybe, someone here will inspire me to read one of her novels.

Thoughts on Didion? And what will you be reading?



^Also try and see the documentary, "The Center Will Not Hold", which is currently running on Netflix. It is excellent.

Thanks for setting up the thread, Mark! I read Slouching Towards Bethlehem last year and really liked it. And I also loved that documentary - The Center Will Not Hold - agree that it is excellent. I will be reading The White Album, although I am tempted by The Year of Magical Thinking.

I'll just mention in passing that both Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album are available on Kindle for just $1.99 each currently.

>4 Crazymamie: Glad you'll be joining us, Mamie. I highly recommend The Year of Magical Thinking. I also want to read Blue Nights about the death of her daughter. What a tragic double-whammy!

Thanks for mentioning the ebook deal. It is a steal.

I looked at the ones available through the ebook collections at my library and chose Where I was From. I found the description particularly appealing since it appears she talks about where her ancestors were from and their migrations.

I have read only The Year of Magical Thinking. I have a vague memory of trying Democracy and giving it up some years ago. I have three separate anthologies that each contain a sample of Didion's work, so I think I will read from those.

The Year of Magical Thinking is available at the library, so it's the one I will start with. I've wanted to read Slouching Toward Bethlehem for a long time as well, so it's in the queue.

Well, Didion is very popular. Most of her books were unavailable when I checked at the library. I was able to get Where I Was From. I enjoy stories about family history and that's what this appears to be.

I have read The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights and I don't have any others waiting on my shelf. We'll see...

I picked Blue Nights from the library.

>9 Familyhistorian: That's the one I'm reading too. It appealed to me for the same reason.

Democracy arrived from the US yesterday. I can't say I'm exactly looking forward to it as I didn't like the other Didion I've read. Hoping this one is better :)

I've downloaded The White Album to slip into my January reading. First timer for Didion.

I am planning to read The Year of Magical Thinking. It will be my first Didion.

You won’t be disappointed Katie. Still to decide what I’ll read.

>4 Crazymamie: I picked up both of these for that nice sale price on Amazon. I'm aiming to read The White Album in January and, if I get a chance, Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

>17 lindapanzo: Hooray, Linda! I really enjoyed Slouching Towards Bethlehem - the John Wayne essay was my very favorite, but they are all very good.

OK, I too have put a bookmark in Slouching Towards Bethlehem. I bought my copy in 2003, and suspect this may be a reread, as some essay titles are familiar (including the John Wayne one). But I’m always up for a reread, and I’ve read over 2/3rds of her work anyway.

Glad to see so many on board with Didion.

>19 Caroline_McElwee: What are your favorite of her novels, Caroline?

Do you know Mark, it is the novels I haven’t read. Ahem, maybe I should find one for the second part of January.

Happy New Year! I wish you to read many good books in 2018.

Joining in - excited to read Didion's South and West

I'm sure I can overcome my Didion enthusiasm deficit and find something of hers to read.

Something...

>24 weird_O: I was similarly in-enthusiastic! But I have found that I am quite enjoying Democracy - though I'm only a few chapters in. It's interesting as I'm also reading London Fields - the novels are so so different but both have interaction with the narrator in the first person so I'm intrigued to see how each folds out.

I've read three of Didion's essays, from various anthologies on my shelves. Two of them are personal essays from The Art of the Personal Essay, and I believe among the most familiar to many readers. First, "Farewell to All That", and second, "In Bed". The third is a piece of hers that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in 1968, containing her impressions on seeing Huey Newton at a news conference. This last is contained in the Library of America collection of Reporting Civil Rights, and it is the best of the three, but I'm afraid that's not saying much. I find Didion dismissive and critical in an unhelpful sort of way. I confess to having formed a bit of an impression of her from photographs in which she always seems to be striking a pose and dripping superiority, but nothing I've read of hers has done anything to alter that impression.

I actively disliked "Farewell to All That", in which Didion spoke of her early years in New York City. Although she stayed there for eight years, it seems she never "lived" there--never settled in, stayed in other people's apartments for a year or so, then in an apartment furnished with other people's furniture and finally in a four-room flat with nothing but a mattress/box springs and 2 garden chairs. She always had an exit date in mind ("after Christmas:, or "in the spring"). She went to too many parties, drank too much, and generally treated her time in the city as a trip to the fair. Ultimately, she grew unbearably tired of it, cried in elevators, couldn't stand to walk along Madison Avenue, go into Schrafft's or Bonwit Teller, or even visit the New York Public Library. "All that" was simply too much. She was clearly depressed, but ignored her doctor's referral to a psychiatrist. This is one of those revealing personal essays that leaves me wondering why on earth I wasted my time reading it. I learned nothing from it other than that I'm quite sure I would not have cared for Ms. Didion's company.

"In Bed", in which Didion describes what it is like to live with migraine, was slightly better. Several people I hold dear suffer this affliction, so this was familiar territory--learning to cope with the pain and its companions (auras, nausea, confusion), finding a regimen that helps to manage it only to have the beast transform itself like a bacterium developing resistance to the miracle drug, learning to live around it and to relish the moments when the beast is asleep.

"Black Panther" is less personal, and offers some insight into the militant civil rights movement, but at this remove it isn't particularly enlightening to read that Huey Newton was a willing pawn of revolutionary politics, or that everything he said in public was rhetoric. However, reading this piece of journalism did prompt me to turn to page 1 of the LOA volume and begin reading some of the other reporting, which has all felt much more worthwhile from a historical perspective so far.

So, a check mark next to her name, and I'm done with Didion.

>25 BekkaJo: I'm glad you are enjoying your reading of Didion. But the post that follows yours (>26 laytonwoman3rd:) hits me in my attitude toward Didion. In photos I've seen of her, she always looks pretty sour. I did read The Year of Magical Thinking a few years ago but none of it clings to my brain cells. I still feel a deficit of enthusiasm.

And I've got stacks of stuff I do want to read. I just may pass on Joan.

>27 weird_O: - I'm not sure you intended it this way, Bill, but your comment makes it seem like much of your issue with Didion is that "she always looks pretty sour." If you find that attitude reflected in her writing, let's talk about that. But I would love us, as a society, to move beyond characterizing people - women especially - by how they look and/or fail to live up to our expectations of how they should look.

*steps off soapbox*

>28 katiekrug: I think that's well said, Katie. The comments about how she comes across in photos is interesting because I don't get that at all. I don't think she looks sour or smug or superior, I think she just looks serious, and I think that is her resting face. I love the documentary that Netflix has on her right now because in it she reads some of her stuff, and it's wonderful. It brings her words to life. I have only read Slouching Towards Bethlehem, but her writing spoke to me. It's an uneven collection of essays, and I don't think the title essay is the strongest one, although certainly she wanted it to be. Anyway, I just wanted to chime in and say that I think her writing is relevant and that she has something to say worth reading - I just don't think that it shines in every essay.

Finished Democracy today. Now, going in to this I was dreading reading it as I really did not like Play it as it lays.

I take it all back - this one was excellent. Big thumbs up from me. Some exquisite turns of phrase.

^I am finally jumping into the AAC fray, with this essay collection!

>31 msf59: It's pretty good, so far, Mark. Enjoy!

I just finished The Year of Magical Thinking. This was the first Didion I had read. Her descriptions of grief were quite poignant and I really enjoyed her investigations into the existing literature of grief.

In Where I was From, Joan Didion explores her family's past in California from the ancestors who followed the early trail to this new part of the American West, to the various iterations of California that the Didion family lives through. It was an interesting look at this part of America.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Thanks to the AAC, I have finally read this book about grief and loss. Didion is an excellent writer. This is the story of her reaction to her husband's death and their daughter's life-threatening illness. It's a hard book, and Didion is honest enough that I did not always like her. I really admire her writing, however, Recently I have read a couple of memoirs that failed, in my opinion, because the authors were too close to the subject to be objective. Here, Didion is very close to her subject, but she manages to also seem objective. I think what works here is spare writing, that doesn't include anything extraneous, and a great attention to details. Here is an example:

"There came a time in the summer when I began feeling fragile, unstable. A sandal would catch on a sidewalk and I would need to run a few steps to avoid the fall. What if I didn't? What if I fell? What would break, who would see the blood streaming down my leg, who would get the taxi, who would be with me in the emergency room? Who would be with me once I came home?
I stopped wearing sandals. I bout two pairs of Puma sneakers and wore them exclusively. "

I also read Where I Was From, sort of a cross between memoir and essays. In fact, in some ways it felt like essays in search of a book. The beginning chapters and ending chapters were the best, and gave one the real sense of Didion's complex relationship with her family and the place of her birth, California. But the middle chapters seemed to be lifted entirely out of old essays written in the 1990's and felt dated. Uneven, but where it shines is in the penetrating look at California, as a place and as an idea.

>35 banjo123: So glad you liked it, Rhonda. Great quote too.

The White Album: Essays by Joan Didion 4 stars

"The beaches at Malibu are neither white nor as wide as the beach at Carmel. The hills are scrubby and barren, infested with bikers and rattlesnakes, scarred with cuts and old burns and new R.V. parks. For these and other reasons Malibu tends to astonish and disappoint those who have never seen it, and yet its very name remains, in the imagination of people all over the world, a kind of shorthand for the easy life. I had not before 1971 and will probably not again live in a place with a Chevrolet named after it."

I think that paragraph sums up, this collection of essays. A mosaic of snaphots, from the 60s and 70s, captured in Didion's deft, slightly aloof style, with razor-sharp insight and vivid imagery. Not every essay here sings, but there are plenty that do and she covers a lot of territory too, although the bulk, are centered around California. The collection opens with the title essay and it is a stunner. If you only want to read one, make it that one.

I have finished The Year of Magical Thinking. I struggled with Slouching Toward Bethlehem, so I went in to this with some reservations. This was a highly personal account of grief; living with grief, coping with grief, seeking an understanding of grief. Because my father-in-law passed away under somewhat similar circumstances last October, it really struck a chord with me. While each person has a unique journey through the grieving process, it gave me some things to think about in regards to how my mother-in-law might be feeling. I loved the writing. Highly recommended.

I have read The Year of Magical Thinking as well, and while it gave me some things to think about, I didn’t love it. I can’t quite put my finger on why it didn’t work for me. I’ve loved books that similarly take a very personal accounts of very difficult personal situations, just not this one.

I've finished Didion's The White Album: Essays and just loved it.

I've read only one other book by Joan Didion--The Year of Magical Thinking--and I really liked that one. I really like this one too. Didion is such a strong writer and isn't afraid to insert herself into these essays. She seems to be such a good observer of events and places (almost poetical at times). These essays serve as both a chronicle of the time--the 60s and 70s--but also a memoir of the author's life.

I do see more Didion in my future reading!

Karen O.