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4.12 AVERAGE
4.12 AVERAGE
informative
medium-paced
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
adventurous
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
Joan, I owe you an apology for waiting so long to try reading any of your books. I wasn’t really familiar with your game
A bit like a cross between Beatrice Sparks Go Ask Alice and Jack Kerouac's On the Road.
I tend to veer towards Didion’s writing style despite not always enjoying the payoff of her essays. This was no exception. Just when you think you’re ready to give up on her, she brings forth a notion or sentence that is profound. Enough that you remain with the work until the end, every now and then forgetting why you wanted to put it down.
Didion’s LA is something mysterious and sultry and peppered with references — most of which my Black British self will never understand — which can sometimes paint a vivid image of the city at the time but mostly remains muddled.
There are glimpses that make me realise why Didion is — as a writer — lauded so highly. There are also times where the plot or flow is so lost I wonder how she was able to do this professionally. As this is book three of her bibliography that I have tackled, the question remains frustratingly unanswered.
reflective
medium-paced
‘That kind of self-respect is a discipline, a habit of mind that can never be faked but can be developed, trained, coaxed forth. It was once suggested to me that, as an antidote to crying, I put my head in a paper bag. As it happens, there is a sound physiological reason, something to do with oxygen, for doing exactly that, but the psychological effect alone is incalculable: it is difficult in the extreme to continue fancying oneself Cathy in Wuthering Heights with one's head in a Food Fair bag. There is a similar case for all the small disciplines, unimportant in themselves; imagine maintaining any kind of swoon, commiserative or carnal, in a cold shower.’
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‘They feed back exactly what is given them. Because they do not believe in words—words are for “typeheads,” Chester Anderson tells them, and a thought which needs words is just one more of those ego trips—their only proficient vocabulary is in the society’s platitudes. As it happens I am still committed to the idea that the ability to think for one’s self depends upon one’s mastery of the language, and I am not optimistic about children who will settle for saying, to indicate that their mother and father do not live together, that they come from “a broken home.” They are sixteen, fifteen, fourteen years old, younger all the time, an army of children waiting to be given the words.’
//
‘They feed back exactly what is given them. Because they do not believe in words—words are for “typeheads,” Chester Anderson tells them, and a thought which needs words is just one more of those ego trips—their only proficient vocabulary is in the society’s platitudes. As it happens I am still committed to the idea that the ability to think for one’s self depends upon one’s mastery of the language, and I am not optimistic about children who will settle for saying, to indicate that their mother and father do not live together, that they come from “a broken home.” They are sixteen, fifteen, fourteen years old, younger all the time, an army of children waiting to be given the words.’
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
fast-paced
challenging
funny
hopeful
informative
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced