Slouching Towards Bethlehem

I don’t typically read essay collections, but this was worth the hype. Didion weaves an affecting tapestry of an America that had only just begun to realize its capacity for decline.

The titular essay reminded me a lot of Inherent Vice by Pynchon, although it was written contemporary to the period it covers, as opposed to Pynchon’s retroactive examination. It makes Didion’s ability to tinge it with irony and nostalgia all the more impressive.

A good part of this collection just flew over my head. I did not have the energy to check all the references that only americans or californians or new yorkers and so on get.
Some essays just hit the right spot.
Incredible writing, of course.

I will be returning to it.

It is a sad coincidence that the day I finish my first of Didion's books, only a few days after discovering what a master of prose she is, is the day she dies. Joan was amazing in this. It's sad I will never be able to read something ‘new' by her but comforting that I have her whole catalogue still to go through. Rest in Peace Joan.

unbelievable writer but I'm a bit too young for a lot of the subject matter to hit squarely

One of my heroes. Second time through was even better.

As amazing as Joan Didion is, I don't think this book has aged well, and I suspect I might have liked it better if I had read it two or three or four decades ago. As it is, it feels quaint, an artifact of modern journalistic history, and I was impatient for it to be over. It is possible that my frustration with the book was exacerbated by the horrible narration by Diane Keaton, but I don't think so.

I loved the front half of this collection, but the second, well, slouches.

Super enjoyable and readable - it lives up to the hype.

Bothering hippies
interviewing white people
West Coast style smugness.

Didion is no slouch herself; Didion can write. She shows her talent in these twenty short essays, first published in the mid-1960's. Clear writing. Crisp writing. Beautiful.



Some of the topics for her essays feel dated now, forty years later. That's okay; despite this, the essays were so well written that it did not matter that no one is terribly concerned with San Francisco and hippies any more.