Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays (1968)

I've awarded five stars to Joan Didion's remarkable Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays, a very rare rating from me for any work of nonfiction. I probably can't add anything to the acreage of praise her work has garnered through the years, latecomer that I am to this author's work. So instead I'll try to say how it makes me feel.

One thing I love about good writing in any genre is that I feel as though I were trying on somebody else's head. The view from Didion's head has crisp, bright edges and an underside of unsparing vulnerability. She has a way of turning--turning not magically but gyroscopically--keen observation into still meditation. I feel that I'm experiencing a crystalline vision of whatever she sees, in all its rounded and jagged reality, and also the echo of pain in the tender being of the observer.

And yet she never fully exposes her mind and its secrets. Instead she steers us toward our own, bringing clarity as well as deeper questions.

In this volume, images of the 1960s in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere are served with a quality of moving air that makes me feel that I am breathing in these scenes as the author experiences them. In the title essay in particular, the poignancy of her depiction of the Haight in the summer of 1967 is almost too vivid for my sensory imagination. I wasn't there. I was in Boston that summer, Boston's own summer of love. A summer that bridged the nation.

I've already read and drunk in The Year of Magical Thinking, which helped me greatly in my first months of widowhood. I'll be seeking out the rest of her work. ( )

This is a collection of Joan Didions writing first collected in 1968. There are pieces written about celebrities, about herself, about America and the fantastic eponymous essay about the San Fransciso counter culture. There's a good range of stuff in here, and although some of the topics are a little dated the writing still feels fresh and precise. ( )

After a viewing of Griffin Dunne's 2017 documentary, The Center will not Hold, I finally picked up Didion's debut work. As a cultural history of a singularly tumultuous time, the book is invaluable. But its real value is in the light it shines on the quickening of a great woman of letters, of a voice that would always be of its time yet still manage to detail the deep and lasting effects of mundane horror. Whether commenting on the ethics of self-respect or morality, or documenting the hippie culture in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury, Didion pulls the veil back in ways most authors would shudder at, exposing herself, and us, in every line. it's an evocative, and self-exorcising, read, and evidence of a truly unique intellect.

Highly recommended.
5 bones!!!! ( )

(review soon--Wow.) ( )

(review soon--Wow.) ( )