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ascribner 's review for:
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
by Joan Didion
While Didion is undoubtedly a masterful writer, and while "Goodbye To All That" is maybe the my new favorite personal essay, it was hard for me to get over Didion's anxious distance from the characters she's writing about. Her wry and often mocking humor can come across as a tool for avoiding any attempt at real empathy, which bothered me especially considering how little Didion's awareness of her own privilege seems to inform her writing. I think of her as very much the opposite of an essayist like DFW, whose extreme vulnerability in the service of empathy can be painful to watch in its own way.