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kstones 's review for:
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
by Joan Didion
Portrait of America in the 1960’s. I liked the autobiographical parts a bit more. The other essays are nominally about other people but still partly center her. This makes it read more like a diary than straight journalism, which was Didion’s intention. I see her influence in later writers, the unspoken conclusions that arise from what might sound like aloof observations.
I like Rafia Zakaria‘s description of Didion described as “a detached but insightful, prescient but vulnerable female writer, acidly exposing American faults to American readers.”
All that said, I did not much enjoy reading this.
“In brief, people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called character, a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to other, more instantly negotiable virtues. The measure of its slipping prestige is that one tends to think of it only in connection with homely children and with United States senators who have been defeated, preferably in the primary, for re-election. Nonetheless, character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.”
I like Rafia Zakaria‘s description of Didion described as “a detached but insightful, prescient but vulnerable female writer, acidly exposing American faults to American readers.”
All that said, I did not much enjoy reading this.
“In brief, people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called character, a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to other, more instantly negotiable virtues. The measure of its slipping prestige is that one tends to think of it only in connection with homely children and with United States senators who have been defeated, preferably in the primary, for re-election. Nonetheless, character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.”