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laruss211's review against another edition
5.0
Joan Didion gave us the phrase "We tell ourselves stories in order to live," one that finds endless renewal for me whenever I think of it. And while the essay with that name isn't in this collection, it (the phrase) is a good example of the way she writes: succinctly, with crystal clarity, yet also with an obscurity that, turned over in your mind, reveals a depth of meaning you didn't know was there. It also hints at these essays' pervading sense: though she notes in her preface that dissolution or even chaos ("things fall apart," from the Yeats poem of the title) was the common thread she saw running through her stories on a housewife murder in San Bernardino ("Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream"), of her time in Haight-Ashbury ("Slouching Towards Bethlehem"), and the rest of these essays, both journalistic and personal, the feeling one gets from them is, more simply, a sense of loss. She writes of her previous life in New York: "...walking uptown in the mauve eight o'clocks of early summer evenings and looking at things, Lowestoft tureens in Fify-seventh Street windows, people in evening clothes trying to get taxis, the trees just coming into full leaf, the lambent air, all the sweet promises of money and summer." It isn't grief, or regret, just loss, and a sense of wonder at the way things slip by--and a reminder of how to live, equipped with this knowledge.
dogstepdad's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
hunter_akridge's review against another edition
4.0
This was my first Didion. I am so glad to have read it. I am inspired to write and to emulate the beauty and honesty of this writing.
coachbelly's review against another edition
5.0
finally did what all Good Sacramentan Women should do and read this and it was so so good. particularly enjoyed “marrying absurd”, “on keeping a notebook”, and “notes from a native daughter.”
shiverkitty's review against another edition
5.0
I don't know how I slept on Joan Didion for so long. I read the forward and needed to take a break. I'm not sure what I can say that hasn't already been said, so I guess I'll stick to basics. Her prose is sharp and clear, her tone is dry like your most entertaining friend on her second martini , and she is sometimes, but not always, hilariously shady.
I was hesitant to read this at first because I wondered what I would get out of essays written in the 1960s, in the thick of counter culture. I'm suspicious of people who write off counter culture as an acid-fried clusterfuck, but Didion manages to have a measure of compassion and ask why the kids she finds in the streets of San Francisco were failed. The essays had some references I didn't get, but they were universal.
Reading the Yeats poem that inspired the title was interesting too - such bombast and terror. I would not have expected the writer, stone-faced and smoking her cigarette, to identify with a poem that captures the same energy as a street preacher raving about the end of the world. No artifice.
I was hesitant to read this at first because I wondered what I would get out of essays written in the 1960s, in the thick of counter culture. I'm suspicious of people who write off counter culture as an acid-fried clusterfuck, but Didion manages to have a measure of compassion and ask why the kids she finds in the streets of San Francisco were failed. The essays had some references I didn't get, but they were universal.
Reading the Yeats poem that inspired the title was interesting too - such bombast and terror. I would not have expected the writer, stone-faced and smoking her cigarette, to identify with a poem that captures the same energy as a street preacher raving about the end of the world. No artifice.
sian_hughes_jones's review against another edition
2.0
Not sure about this one. Maybe I was not in the right frame of mind and maybe it requires reading as opposed to listening. Was better when I listened on 2x speed.
likeapresent's review against another edition
challenging
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
4.0
books_r_better91's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.25