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destinydekarios's review against another edition
4.0
3.5 rounded up to four. i really bought into the writing and it’s bluntness ,but some of the more broad subjects left me lost. maybe i don’t know enough about the time period. either way i’ll be reading more didion.
sseehausen's review against another edition
4.0
“If I could believe that going to a barricade would affect man's fate in the slightest, I would go to that barricade, and quite often I wish I could, but it would be less than honest to say that I expect to happen upon such a happy ending”
What a way with words. Favorite essays: The Getty, Georgia O’Keefe, In Bed, On the Mall, At the Dam, On the Morning After the Sixties.
What a way with words. Favorite essays: The Getty, Georgia O’Keefe, In Bed, On the Mall, At the Dam, On the Morning After the Sixties.
cool_new_jacket's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
2.75
the first two parts of this are pretty good, the women section is alright, and then the rest is just. so boring. and I feel kinda bad because of how iconic didion is as a writer (and just as a notable figure overall), but it didn't make me feel anything, and that's one thing in art I cannot tolerate. it was perfectly fine, and the essay on james pike is amazing. but too much of it made me bored.
amy_westcott_'s review against another edition
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
slow-paced
4.0
Fascinating glimpse into life in the 60s/70s. I love her style of storytelling but there were a lot of references that went over my head having not lived through that period (only so much I can google as I read). Immersive and insightful.
ruinedlanguage's review against another edition
4.0
[3.5] I think the titular essay was probably my favourite, and all my discontent with the rest originated from that I would much rather have been rereading that one. My enjoyment definitely picked back up towards the end, or about half way through “Sojourns”.
Of course, the concluding paragraphs/sentences of each essay were as lovely as promised, but the getting there wasn’t always so fun.
Sometimes I connected so deeply to the people being described, like with Amado Vazquez, and then others I forgot immediately.
Also, I never cared about the name dropping because most of the figures mentioned have no relevance to my personal cultural canon. I have not one clue who Barbara Freed Saltzman is.
My other favourite essays were “Holy Water”, “The Getty”, “Georgia O’Keeffe”, “In Bed,” and “At the Dam”.
In a more unrelated note, I’m happy to have completed the Patti Smith, Joan Didion, and Eve Babitz trifecta though I definitely need to read more Babitz.
Favourite quotes:
“We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the “ideas” with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.”
“The star map was, he had said, for when we were all gone and the dam was left. I had not thought much of it when he said it, but I thought of it then, with the wind whining and the sun dropping behind a mesa with the finality of a sunset in space. Of course that was the image I had seen always, seen it without quite realizing what I saw, a dynamo finally free of man, splendid at last in its absolute isolation, transmitting power and releasing water to a world where no one is.” **
“Once I had a rib broken, and during the few months that it was painful to turn in bed or raise my arms in a swimming pool I had, for the first time, a sharp apprehension of what it would be like to be old. Later I forgot.”
“…but writing has not yet helped me to see what it means.”
“It was supposed to have been their time. It was not.”
“In a way one’s interest is compelled as much by the sister Claudia with the gun as by the painter Georgia with the star, but only the painter left us this shining record. Ten watercolors were made from that star.”**
“In the absence of a natural disaster we are left again to our own uneasy devices. We are here on this island in the middle of the Pacific in lieu of filing for divorce.”
“At the end of the week I tell my husband that I am going to try harder to make things matter. My husband says that he has heard that before, but the air is warm and the baby has another frangipani lei and there is no rancor in his voice. Maybe it can be all right, I say. Maybe, he says.“”
“I was not going to Honolulu because I wanted to see life reduced to a short story. I was going to Honolulu because I wanted to see life expanded to a novel, and I still do.”
“A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image”
“I knew that I had never before heard and would possibly never again hear America singing at precisely this pitch: ethereal, speedy, an angel choir on Dexamyl.”
“Of course the dam derives some of its emotional effect from precisely that aspect, that sense of being a monument to a faith since misplaced.”
“For when the pain recedes, ten or twelve hours later, everything goes with it, all the hidden resentments, all the vain anxieties. The migraine has acted as a circuit breaker, and the fuses have emerged intact. There is a pleasant convalescent euphoria. I open the windows and feel the air, eat gratefully, sleep well. I notice the particular nature of a flower in a glass on the stair landing. I count my blessings.”
“We would survive outside history, in a kind of idée fixe referred to always, during the years I spent at Berkeley, as “some little town with a decent beach.”
“Only one person I knew at Berkeley later discovered an ideology, dealt himself into history, cut himself loose from both his own dread and his own time.”
“I didn’t know orchids then, now they’re like my children. You wait for the first bloom like you wait for a baby to come. Sometimes you wait four years and it opens and it isn’t what you expected, maybe your heart wants to break, but you love it. You never say, ‘that one was prettier.’ You just love them. My whole life is orchids.”
Amado Vazquez loved his country. Amado Vazquez loved his family. Amado Vazquez loved orchids. “You want to know how I feel about the plants,” he said as I was leaving. “I’ll tell you. I will die in orchids.”
Of course, the concluding paragraphs/sentences of each essay were as lovely as promised, but the getting there wasn’t always so fun.
Sometimes I connected so deeply to the people being described, like with Amado Vazquez, and then others I forgot immediately.
Also, I never cared about the name dropping because most of the figures mentioned have no relevance to my personal cultural canon. I have not one clue who Barbara Freed Saltzman is.
My other favourite essays were “Holy Water”, “The Getty”, “Georgia O’Keeffe”, “In Bed,” and “At the Dam”.
In a more unrelated note, I’m happy to have completed the Patti Smith, Joan Didion, and Eve Babitz trifecta though I definitely need to read more Babitz.
Favourite quotes:
“We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the “ideas” with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.”
“The star map was, he had said, for when we were all gone and the dam was left. I had not thought much of it when he said it, but I thought of it then, with the wind whining and the sun dropping behind a mesa with the finality of a sunset in space. Of course that was the image I had seen always, seen it without quite realizing what I saw, a dynamo finally free of man, splendid at last in its absolute isolation, transmitting power and releasing water to a world where no one is.” **
“Once I had a rib broken, and during the few months that it was painful to turn in bed or raise my arms in a swimming pool I had, for the first time, a sharp apprehension of what it would be like to be old. Later I forgot.”
“…but writing has not yet helped me to see what it means.”
“It was supposed to have been their time. It was not.”
“In a way one’s interest is compelled as much by the sister Claudia with the gun as by the painter Georgia with the star, but only the painter left us this shining record. Ten watercolors were made from that star.”**
“In the absence of a natural disaster we are left again to our own uneasy devices. We are here on this island in the middle of the Pacific in lieu of filing for divorce.”
“At the end of the week I tell my husband that I am going to try harder to make things matter. My husband says that he has heard that before, but the air is warm and the baby has another frangipani lei and there is no rancor in his voice. Maybe it can be all right, I say. Maybe, he says.“”
“I was not going to Honolulu because I wanted to see life reduced to a short story. I was going to Honolulu because I wanted to see life expanded to a novel, and I still do.”
“A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image”
“I knew that I had never before heard and would possibly never again hear America singing at precisely this pitch: ethereal, speedy, an angel choir on Dexamyl.”
“Of course the dam derives some of its emotional effect from precisely that aspect, that sense of being a monument to a faith since misplaced.”
“For when the pain recedes, ten or twelve hours later, everything goes with it, all the hidden resentments, all the vain anxieties. The migraine has acted as a circuit breaker, and the fuses have emerged intact. There is a pleasant convalescent euphoria. I open the windows and feel the air, eat gratefully, sleep well. I notice the particular nature of a flower in a glass on the stair landing. I count my blessings.”
“We would survive outside history, in a kind of idée fixe referred to always, during the years I spent at Berkeley, as “some little town with a decent beach.”
“Only one person I knew at Berkeley later discovered an ideology, dealt himself into history, cut himself loose from both his own dread and his own time.”
“I didn’t know orchids then, now they’re like my children. You wait for the first bloom like you wait for a baby to come. Sometimes you wait four years and it opens and it isn’t what you expected, maybe your heart wants to break, but you love it. You never say, ‘that one was prettier.’ You just love them. My whole life is orchids.”
Amado Vazquez loved his country. Amado Vazquez loved his family. Amado Vazquez loved orchids. “You want to know how I feel about the plants,” he said as I was leaving. “I’ll tell you. I will die in orchids.”
jarionel99's review against another edition
2.0
Disrespectful to give this book the same name as one of the greatest albums of all time