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

at the center of this story there is a terrible secret, a kernel of cyanide, and the secret is that the story doesn't matter, doesn't make any difference, doesn't figure. the snow still falls in the sierra. the pacific still trembles in its bowl. [...] in the south they are convinced that they have bloodied their place with history. in the west we do not believe that anything we do can bloody the land, or change it, or touch it. how could it have come to this? i am trying to place myself in history. i have been looking all my life for history and have yet to find it.