es_blackwood 's review for:

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

3.0

reflective relaxing

---

I feel rather complicated about Joan Didion’s work and the cultural symbol that it’s taken on. There’s this persona of the 60’s that she represents which feels unfair when I’m just reading or listening to her writing. Her prose are lovely, if a little repetitive (she loves to use the universal “one” to refer to a person). But I sort of wonder if that persona is one of the reasons her work has remained so relevant. I didn’t find many of her opinions to be particularly groundbreaking, introspective, or inspiring. She just kind of wrote sensibly about slightly fringe topics with unrelenting neutrality. Honestly, I think that neutrality has actually aged worst of all. I don’t think we live in a time where you can be neutral about politics or family or police or court proceedings so some of these essays just felt sooo dated because of that. Too many thoughts to put here sorry