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4.12 AVERAGE
4.12 AVERAGE
rip joan didion. you would’ve loved the iphone notes app
Her prose is so poignant that it makes me want to drive immediately to Southern California — a place I’ve never been and probably will not go for a long time. She writes about her time in California with such delicacy and intimacy that you really feel enveloped in that place and period of her life. Also, JOAN BAEZ MENTIONED!!
loveeee joan didion’s writing but some of these essays drag a little. love the titular essay and her personals, though!
I feel very guilty for rating this so low but I think despite the excellent writing I’m just not very interested in the bulk of the content - California in the 1960s. Its probably a case of a great book that just wasn’t for me, not right now.
Was anyone ever so self-righteous about their view of the world? I am here to tell you that someone was.
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
informative
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Other than an essay here or there, this was my first real exposure to Didion, and what a treat to be in her head. Well, sort of—part of her gift lay in showing us just how much of a curse it could be, seeing and thinking and feeling that way all the time. But to visit it for a while!
I much prefer the essays where she’s writing about something abstract, or at least something broad enough to be projected onto: journaling, Alcatraz, the wind that makes you sad, New York. There, her personal imagination picks up the strands of whatever she’s nominally reporting on and either ties them into an eloquent bow or else takes them and runs wild into some even more interesting land. It’s when her gaze gets mired in overly-reported specifics that my attention drifts—but never so far that I can’t be knocked out by her next hundred-dollar sentence.
I much prefer the essays where she’s writing about something abstract, or at least something broad enough to be projected onto: journaling, Alcatraz, the wind that makes you sad, New York. There, her personal imagination picks up the strands of whatever she’s nominally reporting on and either ties them into an eloquent bow or else takes them and runs wild into some even more interesting land. It’s when her gaze gets mired in overly-reported specifics that my attention drifts—but never so far that I can’t be knocked out by her next hundred-dollar sentence.
challenging
funny
reflective