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A review by chazele
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
5.0
i thought this book was really quite phenomenal. i was impressed by the white album -- which is why i gave this other classic a shot-- but i think slouching towards bethlehem slightly blows it out of the water.
i'm a big hater of travel literature: there's something awful (to me) about recounting places for the sake of recounting them -- almost like a striking an item off a checklist -- because of how distant it feels. in all fairness, this is probably because the minimal travel literature i've been exposed to has the writer chronicling their experience through the depiction of a landscape, a collection of the sounds (languages AND dialects included, of course), and maybe one or two anecdotes of the people there. it just seems clinical to me, and i read to feel more so than to catalogue.
there's also that frustrating thing about travel writers being very much a visitor in the space they write about, which (unjustly but undoubtedly) makes me feel like they're writing about a real place with the same approach as one might try to flesh out a fantasy setting.
because so much of didion's writing has to do with either california (and occasionally new york), she speaks with a firm sense of ownership, and there is a resultant earnestness in her writing that elevates it. i can't pretend to know why this is the case, but the book oozes sincerity. I'm not a fan of non-fiction at all, but this collection of "geographical" but personally involved writing punctuated by self-focused essays that are in equal parts honest and critical has firmly converted me to a didion-head
i think this book is wonderful, and have it mentally shelved as my accidental but continuing education on the terrible (in both senses of the word) west coast.
i'm a big hater of travel literature: there's something awful (to me) about recounting places for the sake of recounting them -- almost like a striking an item off a checklist -- because of how distant it feels. in all fairness, this is probably because the minimal travel literature i've been exposed to has the writer chronicling their experience through the depiction of a landscape, a collection of the sounds (languages AND dialects included, of course), and maybe one or two anecdotes of the people there. it just seems clinical to me, and i read to feel more so than to catalogue.
there's also that frustrating thing about travel writers being very much a visitor in the space they write about, which (unjustly but undoubtedly) makes me feel like they're writing about a real place with the same approach as one might try to flesh out a fantasy setting.
because so much of didion's writing has to do with either california (and occasionally new york), she speaks with a firm sense of ownership, and there is a resultant earnestness in her writing that elevates it. i can't pretend to know why this is the case, but the book oozes sincerity. I'm not a fan of non-fiction at all, but this collection of "geographical" but personally involved writing punctuated by self-focused essays that are in equal parts honest and critical has firmly converted me to a didion-head
i think this book is wonderful, and have it mentally shelved as my accidental but continuing education on the terrible (in both senses of the word) west coast.