After Henry
by Joan Didion
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Incisive essays on Patty Hearst and Reagan, the Central Park jogger and the Santa Ana winds, from the New York Times-bestselling author of South and West. In these eleven essays covering the national scene from Washington, DC; California; and New York, the acclaimed author of Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album confirms her reputation as one of our sharpest and most trustworthy cultural observers. Whether dissecting the 1988 presidential campaign, exploring the commercialization show more of a Hollywood murder, or reporting on the "sideshows" of foreign wars, Joan Didion proves that she is one of the premier essayists of the twentieth century. Highlights include "In the Realm of the Fisher King," a portrait of the White House under the stewardship of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, two "actors on location;" and "Girl of the Golden West," a meditation on the Patty Hearst case that draws an unexpected and insightful parallel between the kidnapped heiress and the emigrants who settled California. "Sentimental Journeys" is a deeply felt study of New York media coverage of the brutal rape of a white investment banker in Central Park, a notorious crime that exposed the city's racial and class fault lines. show lessTags
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A collection of Didion’s essays from 1992, following the death in 1979 of Henry Robbins, her friend and editor at Farrar, Strauss & Giroux. Regarding death, given subsequent events, she poignantly says in her introduction:
“As time passed it occurred to many of us that our benign experience was less than general, that we had been to date blessed or charmed or plain lucky, players on a good roll, but by that time we were busy: caught up in days that seemed too full, too various, too crowded with friends and obligations and children, dinner parties and deadlines, commitments and overcommitments. “You can’t imagine how it is when everyone you know is gone,” someone I knew who was old would say to me, and I would nod, show more uncomprehending, yes I can, I can imagine; would even think, God forgive me, that there must be a certain peace in outliving all debts and claims, in being known to no one, floating free. I believed that days would be too full forever, too crowded with friends there was no time to see. I believed, by way of contemplating the future, that we would all be around for one another’s funerals. I was wrong. I had failed to imagine, I had not understood.”
The first section on the political environment of Washington DC is fascinating for a non-American as an analysis of the “process”, and although written over thirty years ago, still read as being relevant both in America and Britain.
The second section contains essays about California, including Girl of the Golden West in which Didion reviews Patty Hearst’s 1982 memoir (Hearst was the daughter of a wealthy Californian family, who was kidnapped and had become a terrorist/criminal), where I had read some of Didion’s notes from the time of the 1976 trial, which were not subsequently published until 2017 in South and West. This can sound a particularly historic piece of journalism, but allows the reader to draw more general conclusions from the specific details, and does so with delicate and stylish prose. I think that the power of her essays arises from her ability to allow the reader to draw conclusions, not the writer.
There is also an essay, Fire Season, about the wild fires that rage across the area around Los Angeles with a punch at the end about what one accepts as normal.
The excellent final New York based essay, Sentimental Journeys, is about the reporting on a Central Park rape case and what it reveals about New York:
Later it would be recalled that 3,254 other rapes were reported that year (1989) ... but the point was rhetorical, since crimes are universally understood to be news to the extent that they offer, however erroneously, a story, a lesson, a high concept.
It was precisely in conflation of victim and city, this confusion of personal woe with public distress, that the crime’s “story” would be found, its lesson, its encouraging promise of narrative resolution. show less
“As time passed it occurred to many of us that our benign experience was less than general, that we had been to date blessed or charmed or plain lucky, players on a good roll, but by that time we were busy: caught up in days that seemed too full, too various, too crowded with friends and obligations and children, dinner parties and deadlines, commitments and overcommitments. “You can’t imagine how it is when everyone you know is gone,” someone I knew who was old would say to me, and I would nod, show more uncomprehending, yes I can, I can imagine; would even think, God forgive me, that there must be a certain peace in outliving all debts and claims, in being known to no one, floating free. I believed that days would be too full forever, too crowded with friends there was no time to see. I believed, by way of contemplating the future, that we would all be around for one another’s funerals. I was wrong. I had failed to imagine, I had not understood.”
The first section on the political environment of Washington DC is fascinating for a non-American as an analysis of the “process”, and although written over thirty years ago, still read as being relevant both in America and Britain.
The second section contains essays about California, including Girl of the Golden West in which Didion reviews Patty Hearst’s 1982 memoir (Hearst was the daughter of a wealthy Californian family, who was kidnapped and had become a terrorist/criminal), where I had read some of Didion’s notes from the time of the 1976 trial, which were not subsequently published until 2017 in South and West. This can sound a particularly historic piece of journalism, but allows the reader to draw more general conclusions from the specific details, and does so with delicate and stylish prose. I think that the power of her essays arises from her ability to allow the reader to draw conclusions, not the writer.
There is also an essay, Fire Season, about the wild fires that rage across the area around Los Angeles with a punch at the end about what one accepts as normal.
The excellent final New York based essay, Sentimental Journeys, is about the reporting on a Central Park rape case and what it reveals about New York:
Later it would be recalled that 3,254 other rapes were reported that year (1989) ... but the point was rhetorical, since crimes are universally understood to be news to the extent that they offer, however erroneously, a story, a lesson, a high concept.
It was precisely in conflation of victim and city, this confusion of personal woe with public distress, that the crime’s “story” would be found, its lesson, its encouraging promise of narrative resolution. show less
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Born in Sacramento, California, on December 5, 1934, Joan Didion received a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1956. She wrote for Vogue from 1956 to 1963, and was visiting regent's lecturer in English at the University of California, Berkeley in 1976. Didion also published novels, short stories, social commentary, and essays. Her show more work often comments on social disorder. Didion wrote for years on her native California; from there her perspective broadened and turned to the countries of Central America and Southeast Asia. Her novels include Democracy (1984) and The Last Thing He Wanted (1996). Well known nonfiction titles include Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968), The White Album (1979), The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) and Blue Nights (2011). In 1971 Joan Didion was nominated for the National Book Award in fiction for Play It As It Lays. In 1981 she received the American Book Award in nonfiction, and was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Prize in nonfiction for The White Album. Didion has received a great deal of recognition for The Year of Magical Thinking, which was awarded the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2005. In 2007, Didion received the National Book Foundation's annual Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. In 2009, Didion was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by Harvard University. On July 3, 2013 the White House announced Didion was one of the recipients of the National Medals of Arts and Humanities presented by President Barack Obama. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Nel paese del re pescatore
- Original title
- After Henry {US}
- Alternate titles
- Sentimental Journeys {UK}
- Original publication date
- 1992
- People/Characters
- Robbins, Henry
- Dedication
- This book is dedicated to Henry Robbins and to Bret Easton Ellis, each of whom did time with its publisher.
- First words
- In the summer of 1966 I was living in a borrowed house in Brentwood, and had a new baby.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)In the Summer of 1996 I was living in a borrowed house in Brentwood, and had a new baby. (After Henry)
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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- ISBNs
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- ASINs
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