A review by sassylk
South and West: From a Notebook by Joan Didion

inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.0

reading Didion’s notes might be as close as i can get to being inside her head, and wow is it comfortable in here. She has an absolute mastery over creating a strong sense of place - i could smell and taste her descriptions of the south, with every detail and observation placed carefully and succinctly. she is a conjurer, and the type of writer i long to be and love to read. her observations are meticulous, loving, yet tongue in cheek at the same time. i was underlining things from the first page of writing. it’s so inspiring to read someone’s notes, and to find fully formed images there already. 

“all people on the street move as if suspended in a precarious emulsion, and it seems only a technical distinction between the quick and the dead”

“in New Orleans they have mastered the art of the motionless”

“there was no sun. the air was as liquid as the pool. everything seemed to be made of concrete, and damp”

“a point from which one could see what was always called ‘the Fox sky’. Twentieth century fox had a ranch back in the hills there, not a working ranch but several thousand acres on which westerns were shot, and ‘the Fox sky’ was simply that: the Fox sky, the giant Fox sky scrim, the Big Country Backdrop.”