This is going to be a much less insightful review than an intensely insightful book deserves, but oh well. Her essays are pretty hit or miss for me---some of them are just fantastic (especially the ones with historical relevance), and some of them just don't do it for me (her knotty internal world can be interesting to me in an academic way, but I don't think like that and I don't want to). ( )

Of course I recognize that this is a classic and a masterclass in nonfiction writing. I went thru a period about ten years ago where I read 3 or 4 Didion books in about as many months. I guess since then both the world and I have changed together, cuz I just don’t feel the same about this kind of book as I did back then. The section in “The Morning after the Sixties” where she talks about being at Berkeley in the fifties is a good example of what I mean. It’s just another work of post 60s malaise that settles comfortably into sedated fatalism, a phenomenon we’ll depicted in Adam Curtis’ film Hypernormalization. It’s sort of shocking to read the kind of opulence Didion and her family were living in back then. She makes a point in the beginning of the book about how living in California, contrary to popular belief, isn’t all milk and honey, and actually requires a rugged individual. It seems more likely to me that dealing with and recovering natural disasters is less about mindset and more about what’s in your bank account. Apparently these people could just up and move whenever they wanted. Of course that’s part of being a successful writer and intellectual, sure, but this book might as well be scripture to what was probably the most privileged group of people in the most privileged generation in American history.

Hard to not feel a little resentful. ( )

I have had this book on my shelves for years. Finally got around to reading it in one gulp while flying to Manila. Classic Didion. Cool, closely observed, with quirky connections. ( )

When I first made up my reading list at the start of the year I hadn't decided on a candidate for the letter W, so I left it open. But a few months later Amazon Prime decided for me, because one of the free monthly downloads was Joan Didion's The White Album. I'd heard a lot of things about it so I decided to give it a go.

This was a book that came with a lot of baggage and speculation on my part. I remember when it first came out (I was in high school) because I read about it in The New York Times Book Review, which my elderly uncle faithfully brought over to us every Sunday along with the rest of the Times. Since the book had the same title as The Beatles album I assumed the essays were all about the turmoil of the 1960s. Well, the first one in the book was, but the others ranged from that time up to the mid-1970s and were about Vietnam, architecture, infrastructure, and Hollywood. Wide-ranging, but the focus was on California.

But not California's youth culture. Didion was born in 1934 so she was in her 30s when the decade began and wasn't inclined to find resonance with drugs, sex, and rock and roll, only unease and a vague horror. I can guess for someone whose life had gone swimmingly until then, with hard work begetting success and that success buoyed by American society running smoothly, the likes of Charles Manson and campus shootings would have been a true shock, though frankly they pale compared to subsequent news events in the 2000s and beyond.

So the age of the book, and the long lens of the 2020s, didn't allow me to find resonance with it either. Some of the essays were almost indecipherable, like one about feminism that was extremely dated, and another about the introduction of commuter lanes, called then "Diamond Lanes," to the city of Los Angeles. As a writer she took great pains to be neutral, but I can sense her irritation at the idea, and she came across as bitching about a whole lot of nothing. The joke turned out to be on her, as today commuter lanes are alive and kicking.

Other essays were more timeless, or if dated, interesting slices of life back then. Like an essay on California infrastructure -- that of water and electricity and how it is portioned out in the American West -- and her personal experiences dealing with migraines, Malibu, and vacationing at The Royal Hawaiian Hotel, now dwarfed by the megahotels that have been built up next to it on the shores of Waikiki. She could turn a phrase, and it was interesting to read the original, deadpan style that in turn influenced luminaries like Hunter S. Thompsen, Fran Leibowitz, Lester Bangs, even Joanna Russ.

But like all of those, I wound up getting impatient with her authorial voice. Very self-absorbed. I think I'd like her more autobiographical work though. ( )

I adored this book. Didion writes beautifully, with a quickness and wit that is the equal of anything I've read. An essay can be heading on one direction, instantly turn on its head for a sentence or paragraph and then resume its original course, or change direction yet again. Everything is full of meaning, but as she explains in one of the later essays, it's not some meaning about the world, but only ever a personal one. Orchids, the Hoover Dam and serial killers are worth writing about because they're interesting, not because they're significant. It's a follow your nose attitude to intellectual life that makes Didion very fun company.

So is there anything deeper here, or is it just an exercise in aesthetics? Well first of all, what does "just aesthetics" mean? But second, yes I think there is. These essays are a celebration of curiosity and a warning against seriousness. Didion is modelling a spirit of enquiry and lightness which would make the world a much better place. She's not apolitical, in fact the timelessness of her political commentary is testament to the power of her approach. By looking at personality, style and rhetoric, she more accurately characterises the political temper of the time than the serious pundits and experts whose commentary long ago grew stale.

And that style! Everything is so clearly described and laden with meaning. It's a pleasure to read and wonderfully entertaining, which is exactly what a book should be. ( )