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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
Will revisit at a later time. Library book, and my interest is not high enough to get through it before it's due.
Didion writes with exquisite detail about moments, conversations and observations that are so acute the experience can be slightly painful to the reader. In this work, written in 1970, Didion, records a trip she took with her husband, John Dunne, through Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. In numerous passages is excruciatingly difficult to experience the south from her very white, western POV but much of what she writes rings true to my experience, having lived four years in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Her commentary on race, privilege, and the confederate flag are honest, jarring and spoken by a visitor to a new and strange land.
In West, Didion, won me over with her analysis of the experiences and beliefs that create our personal and collective cultural landscape. We are who we are in combination of experience, lessons from our parents, the influence of time and place, the American political climate, and the horizon we take for granted each day.
In West, Didion, won me over with her analysis of the experiences and beliefs that create our personal and collective cultural landscape. We are who we are in combination of experience, lessons from our parents, the influence of time and place, the American political climate, and the horizon we take for granted each day.
It is always a pleasure to read Joan Didion. Regardless of the topic, I love to let her writing just drip over me and soak in her words. This book came from some notebooks found after her death and while not polished by an editor, her brilliance still shows through.
This isn't a book, it's just notes on a trip Joan Didion took to the south in 1970 for a book or article she never wrote. Some of it is intriguing, some sounds like every other thing written about the rural south, some is sort of boring. Not really worth publishing as a book, I don't think.
I love Joan Didion. I love Joan Didion. I love Joan Didion.
Good, now that we’ve clarified that, I need to confess that I did not love this book.
South and West is a collection of entries from Joan Didion’s 1970s notebook while travelling through the American South (Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana), and later, reflections on her deep connection to the West, in California.
Joan Didion’s writing, as always, is impeccable, and it is consistent with her famous quality of perfectly capturing the essence of place, cultural climate, people, and atmosphere.
But I found the content to be quite dry and slow, and it took me weeks to read this teeny tiny 126 page book. Whatever point it was trying to make was a bit lost on me, and I couldn’t really connect with the message.
I won’t hold this against Joan, and I still have a couple of her books sitting on my shelf waiting to be read, which I hope to love just as much as her other works
Good, now that we’ve clarified that, I need to confess that I did not love this book.
South and West is a collection of entries from Joan Didion’s 1970s notebook while travelling through the American South (Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana), and later, reflections on her deep connection to the West, in California.
Joan Didion’s writing, as always, is impeccable, and it is consistent with her famous quality of perfectly capturing the essence of place, cultural climate, people, and atmosphere.
But I found the content to be quite dry and slow, and it took me weeks to read this teeny tiny 126 page book. Whatever point it was trying to make was a bit lost on me, and I couldn’t really connect with the message.
I won’t hold this against Joan, and I still have a couple of her books sitting on my shelf waiting to be read, which I hope to love just as much as her other works
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
When your notebooks are full of writing that is better than almost everyone else's finished product...
reflective
medium-paced
Not the best Didion work. Feels like a money grab publishing unfinished notes. That being said, it was an interesting look at her process and a window on the Deep South in the 1970s.
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
"There are no drinks to soften the harshness of it. Ice is begrudged. I remember in one such place asking for iced coffee. The waitress asked me how to make it. 'Same way as iced tea,' I said. She looked at me without expression. 'In a cup?' she asked."
there were so many beautiful words, but these were my favorite.
there were so many beautiful words, but these were my favorite.