Joan Didion: C/D?

dud? really? i'm reading my first collection of didion essays and her prose is blowing my mind. i haven't really come across too many negative reactions.

i've been meaning to start this thread for the past week, too!

I've never really heard many who would dare dudion. (Sorry.)

But, yeah, she's seriously one of my top five favorite writers.

Miami is so accurate that it makes me love the shit town in which I live all the more.

I expected to hate The Year of Magical Thinking because of the hype, but after I bought it a few months ago I was struck again by what a perfect marriage of subject and writer – she's the only one who could assess such a dreadful experience with the sort of dispassion that's possible only after thinking through an emotion with all your intelligence and imagination.

I finally got round picking up one of her novels, 'Play it as it lays'. Good stuff.

Her collection of recent politcrit Political Fiction is pretty great too, especially the one tracing the origin of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy's attempt to impeach Clinton.

I wanted to get myself this baby last time I was in NYC, but couldn't fit it in my suitcase. Next time.

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/51PRNY6V02L._SS500_.jpg

It's all good. I can't imagine too many other writers making me want to read an essay on, for instance, the inner workings of the Hoover Dam.

Just for balance, here's a dissent:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/blogs/wolcott/2005/06/joanie_loves_sc.html

Didion's been coasting on a pinched air of superiority for decades

I've never understood why anyone should be ashamed of being superior.

I read that Wolcott dissent at the time, and it made no sense. I mean:

Where I Was From, Political Fictions, Miami, Salvador...it's a long arid trek with no oasis in view, a joyless stretch (Didion has no humor whatsoever) of preciously guarded insights and uninflected prose amounting to a body of work with a barely detectable pulse.

Her ethos is to accumulate data – quotes, statistics – and let the humor arise from the situation. I've laughed aloud many times.

He (and Pauline Kael) are right about the "sanitarium chic" with which her novels are suffused, though.

didion's humour is very, very dry, but it's not joyless.

i love the 'personals' section of slouching towards bethlehem...

Yeah, Didion's work is very much about the humor of the mundane.

And I think Didion has demonstrated an awareness and self-critical (albeit self-interested) attitude towards her ... attitude.

What's "sanitarium chic"?

And I think Didion has demonstrated an awareness and self-critical (albeit self-interested) attitude towards her ... attitude.

didion's self-awareness really adds an extra dimension to her observations - her writing is as much about analysing herself and her reactions as the things she sees

*Year of Magical Thinking* was fascinating, but only as a sort of case study of a very idiosyncratic sensibility responding to death. Nothing that matched my own experiences.

terrible screenwriter.

baaderonixx: She fetishizes the fractured, lacuna-specked thinking of loonies, like BZ in Play It As It Lays.

haha i find her really obnoxious in this blinkered NYRB high-horse way, but she is a brilliant prose artist.

most things on ilx re: didion point to classic
i base most of my opinion on her older stuff, which seems to eclipse everything else, and b/c years ago slouching towards bethlehem changed my life, in a way

yeah her writing seems/seemed to affect as much in terms of prose artistry than content, pos more

affect me, i mean

So, of the old stuff, where's a newbie to start?

The White Album and Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

I say plow through chronologically.

So, yeah, begin with those two and if you like what you read, continue.

I've only read the collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem and a handful of other pieces but it's all great.

I expected to hate The Year of Magical Thinking because of the hype, but after I bought it a few months ago I was struck again by what a perfect marriage of subject and writer – she's the only one who could assess such a dreadful experience with the sort of dispassion that's possible only after thinking through an emotion with all your intelligence and imagination.

She's a very good writer, but the dispassionate way she approached that subject in TYOMT made it hard for me to like the book.

i like her. i didn't used to so much. but then i moved to los angeles.

My favorite living writer and one of my four or five favorites of all time. Her sentences are like little diamonds. I never tire of rereading them. The place to start is Play It As It Lays, in my opinion, but I've spent a lot of time with that one, so much that it's like one of those things where I can't imagine being unfamiliar with it, you know? Democracy is also incredible, and The Last Thing He Wanted is something else, too. All the novels are good; for essays, I'd go with After Henry first - she's a better writer now than she was when she wrote The White Album, but then again, some of the stuff in TWA is so heavily anthologized that I may be a little immune to its first-reading charms.

Thanks all.

haha she is pretty much for new yorkers who don't "get" la, isn't she.

MEMO TO NY: CALIFORNIA IS WEIRD! LOOK HOW THE SUN REFLECTS OFF THAT BARN, THE 60S WENT SOUR, WE ARE ALL PARANOID.
-JD

I'd go with After Henry first - she's a better writer now than she was when she wrote The White Album,

OTM. The essay on Reagan and her coverage of the '88 Democratic convention are scary and hilarious.

sorry, i'm just trolling because i think andy dick is much funnier than joan didion

BAN GHOST RIDER

there are some great omnibus collections out there too - mine has Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album and After Henry in one volume

i get l.a.

i think part of my california obsession is b/c of didion

I've read most of her fiction and essays but tend to favour the latter. Still haven't got round to reading 'The year of magical thinking' i'm rather ashamed to say but have a pile of other books waiting to be read so it'll have to wait. I've read 'Playland' and 'Monster' by her late husband John Gregory Dunne, is any of his other stuff worth seeking out?

i just bought slouching towards bethlehem

also

i like her. i didn't used to so much. but then i moved to los angeles.

-- get bent, Thursday, 19 July 2007 14:55

is part of the reason why

i've only read STB (and that years ago) and it was good but i've never made a dent in any of the novels. i read some of play it as it lays and it just seemed like an unfunny less than zero told from the parents' POV.

yeah, she's from california, ghost rider, not some woody allen circa annie hall type doing "lol, uri geller and wheat germ"

Classic.

mega-classic. but i think the schiavo piece in NYRB that wolcott disses was one of her rare misfires. mixed on her fiction but slouching toward bethlehem and the white album really opened my eyes ca 1980. was her political reportage on latin america in the 80s was courageous.

for instance here she's typically incisive on VS Naipaul

i read some of play it as it lays and it just seemed like an unfunny less than zero told from the parents' POV.

Well-put.

really? i meant that is well-put but is it accurate? i dont think so. but then do you mean in the writing style or in the narrative? i guess i just hate bret easton-ellis so any comparison btwn him and joan didion makes me unhappy :(

Ellis borrowed lots from her.

the sixties counterculture had some sharp thinkers who had intellectual chops, but by the time it filtered out into the general population of young people, it was reduced to a garbled mess of poorly focused anti-authoritarian sentiments that vaguely aspired to anarchy but didn't have the integrity to achieve it.

the one movement that emerged from the sixties with integrity, focus and a driving will to succeed was the gay rights movement.

that appears to undersell the achievements of the civil rights and feminist movements imo (which obviously flamed out after certain goals were achieved - gay rights movement had farther to go and took way longer, also started last)

I think Aimless means in terms of social movements that saw their first (American) flourishing in that era

there are a lot of words i’d use to describe “slouching towards bethlehem” the essay, none of which would be “disdain”

alfred otm

i mean you’re not wrong exactly shakey so i’m not trying to start an argument

when I reread Didion, which is often, I don't go to her early non-fiction.

^^^^

i tends to return often to parts of book of common prayer and miami

the architecture of Miami is as satisfying as a George Eliot novel's.

When the book ends with the Reagan quote it's the shutting of a door.

feel like that piece is more of a passive aggressive swipe at people who instagram their manicures amidst table spreads with anthropologie china sets and replicas of didion first editions than anything else

i probably didn’t read it right though

Yeah, I know that photo of her with the cigarette was the desktop background or profile picture for a lot of my fellow english majors back in college. But that shouldn’t be a crime

i think i still like didion? (i was obsessed with the hoover dam essay when i was a teenager.) but year of magical thinking didn't really click for me, and i read play it as it lays a few years ago and hated it. obviously she's an amazing stylist but i'm not convinced she has much more going on than that.

i do agree that her writing isn't going to age well but what writing will in the coming apocalypse

that appears to undersell the achievements of the civil rights and feminist movements imo (which obviously flamed out after certain goals were achieved - gay rights movement had farther to go and took way longer, also started last)

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, October 16, 2018 2:06 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I mean c'mon the Civil Rights movement predated the Haight/Ashbury hippie millieu by years (and before the 60s!) and it's been my impression that the hippies didn't really do shit for heavy lifting as far as civil rights was concerned (and frankly had their own problematic racial stuff)

(if we're specifically talking about Slouching and the Haight Ashbury scene she's writing about)

I don't disagree w any of that.

Aimless said "emerged from the sixties", so yeah I took it to be a broader statement about what was accomplished by radical movements in the 60s in general, and what they morphed into afterwards.

i read play it as it lays a few years ago and hated it. obviously she's an amazing stylist but i'm not convinced she has much more going on than that.

Like Baldwin, her novels feel uninhabited, or are exhibitions of their worst tendencies as essayists.

I can take or leave Magical Thinking. To me, her achievement rests with Miami, After Henry, and Political Fictions.

i'll keep miami in mind if and when i give her another try.

Rather different.

as Brad points out, she shows no deeper acquaintance with her later books from Miami onward in which Didion became a different writer. She mitigates the disdain, I think, by using motifs; it's as if the use of them concentrates her mind (i.e. emphasizing Prio's daughter's French heels and smoking on a rainy summer afternoon in a Miami condo).

― You like queer? I like queer. Still like queer. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, October 16, 2018 2:48 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the didion revival of last 10 years is mostly about the earlier works though; no one reads or talks about Miami

maria bustillos has been the worst writer on earth for like ten years now

― princess of hell (BradNelson), Monday, October 15, 2018 5:29 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i thought she was p good?

also popula.com is kind of interesting to me, may be worth starting a thread for

the didion revival of last 10 years is mostly about the earlier works though; no one reads or talks about Miami

Which is a pity! And Political Fictions is its match: bone-dry essays about the Clinton impeachment hearings ("Vichy Washington") and Newt Gingrich that appeared in the NYROB and no doubt contributed to the cachet on which it's depended for the last twenty years.

Miami is fucking amazing & Democracy is her best.

I know this is a coterie I'm referring to but every person to whom I've recommended Miami has been amaze.

amazed too

Salvador is a good companion to Miami too

attempts to write takedowns of Didion on politics are nothing new and they always fall flat because rely heavily some pretty simple good-guys-bad-guys formulae. I don't think Joan Didion believes in good guys, generally, except with heavy qualifications

i thought she was p good?

you try sifting through the sentences in this particular piece

or reading any of my other posts about her

also idc if only her early essays have been prioritized, if you’re gonna write a takedown of something you should have a holistic view of your subject (imo) (many a takedown i should’ve enjoyed in the past is compromised by laziness and dishonesty), otherwise you should aim the takedown at her fans who have only read the cover image of the white album i guess

also i am long overdue to check out democracy, maybe now’s the time

I was wondering why Didion was trending today, thought she died for a sec

https://youtu.be/o2yCIunJQ14

ach no thank you

idgi

The last two paragraphs of Miami, which I've just reread, had me drawing breaths.

I’ll need to revisit. Just brought We Tell Ourselves ... out of storage and started re-reading Political Fictions.

I lifted a good print of Play It as It Lays off YouTube a couple of years ago (still there), a movie I'd been waiting forever to see. I started it, watched a few minutes, never went back. Capturing white whales is too easy now. A reminder to myself to try again.

I read We Tell Ourselves... a few years back as a library copy. I just broke down and bought one for my own library, after constantly looking for a cheap used copy and failing to find one.

I added the Library of America volumes and am hoping there's one that covers the '00s and '10s (and, God willing, the '20s) still to come.

oh no

God willing, the '20s

:(

The New York Review of Books has un-paywalled about 40 articles she wrote for them over the years.

Link

found “A Book Of Common Prayer” at the local library today, looking forward to reading for the first time

had planned to reread “Play As It Lays” this holidays already so that will still happen too

RIP <3

I've only ever read Play It as It Lays and a few assorted essays. What would y'all recommend by her for someone who doesn't want to read a whole bunch about American politics?

Reading Miami through the three NYRB installments and am completely enthralled. I love that's it's local and specific and anthropological, not a Didion memoir or focused on pop culture or national politics. Every paragraph is worth savoring.

Miami is truly outstanding. Alfred said it upthread, and as an ex-Floridian who has some familiarity with that culture, it rings true for me and I hope other people can appreciate it

Deleted my Joan Didion Tweet because I need to be less negative. Sad to see hippie-bashing on the timeline though. One of those far-right opinions that somehow became leftish common sense. Laughing at people who wanted peace and love. So hateful.

— Don Hughes (@getfiscal) December 23, 2021

What would y'all recommend by her for someone who doesn't want to read a whole bunch about American politics?

sorry, i'm just trolling because i think andy dick is much funnier than joan didion

― ghost rider, Thursday, July 19, 2007 7:58 AM (seventeen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

you still feel that way?