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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
dark
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
One of the best readings by her. And yes, I’m aware of Slouching towards Bethlehem.
Although I generally love Joan Didion, I wouldn’t suggest this particular book. Firstly because it’s not so much a “book” as it is a random assembly of notes she took on two trips in the 1970’s. Even Didion didn’t use these notes to fashion an article or memoir. Secondly, the title is misleading. Even though it’s called “South and West,” the majority of the text is notes in the South with about 13 pages of California (specifically Sacramento and San Francisco) notes in the back. Finally, although you can tell Didion’s notes about her southern roadtrip are intended to be an unbiased snapshot of things she saw and heard, Nathaniel Rich’s 2016 introduction to the book establishes some troubling moral architecture around the otherwise disorganized text, touting the 1970’s South as somehow superior in its frank racist and sexist values to California’s idealism (whatever its faults may be). Without the introduction, the text would have been potentially tolerable, but reading old plantation owners’ f***ed up opinions through the lens that evil honesty is better than naive idealism was too much for me.
4.5 stars
My first voyage into Joan Didion, and I think this delivered exactly what it said it would. These are notes from a notebook that Didion wrote down and published -- some of the thoughts are so disjointed that you can't look into them deeply because there's nothing there. It was a passing thought. But amidst this, Didion manages to bring a very important angle to the struggles in the South of Black workers in that day, just after the passing of the Civil Rights Movement and integration, into Black Power: the angle of someone who is not familiar with the South.
Having grown up in Alabama the first 18 years of my life, then lived in Florida for the last 12 years, I am quite familiar with the rhetoric of the South as a hopeless, backwards place that has permanently given into anti-Blackness, homo/transphobia, racism, sexism, etc. I've heard it for most of my life. We are frequently written off by the ~progressive northerners and westerners~ who, if they have even been to the South, have stayed primarily in the big cities, and if they are from the South, have distanced themselves from both it and all matters of humanity. These are the people who are, by and large, the most annoying, but also the ones we need to change the thinking of.
Here, Didion does not tell the Southerner anything they don't already know -- I knew most of the places she stayed at; I could visualize Bob Evans and I've never even seen the man-- but she does tell the non-Southerners a lot. She questions the north/west's supposed superiority on racial issues and, through her interviews with the locals where she stops, shows that the leg work of fighting a 400-year old, unimaginably conniving system, is being done in the South.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book and am excited to read more Didion.
My first voyage into Joan Didion, and I think this delivered exactly what it said it would. These are notes from a notebook that Didion wrote down and published -- some of the thoughts are so disjointed that you can't look into them deeply because there's nothing there. It was a passing thought. But amidst this, Didion manages to bring a very important angle to the struggles in the South of Black workers in that day, just after the passing of the Civil Rights Movement and integration, into Black Power: the angle of someone who is not familiar with the South.
Having grown up in Alabama the first 18 years of my life, then lived in Florida for the last 12 years, I am quite familiar with the rhetoric of the South as a hopeless, backwards place that has permanently given into anti-Blackness, homo/transphobia, racism, sexism, etc. I've heard it for most of my life. We are frequently written off by the ~progressive northerners and westerners~ who, if they have even been to the South, have stayed primarily in the big cities, and if they are from the South, have distanced themselves from both it and all matters of humanity. These are the people who are, by and large, the most annoying, but also the ones we need to change the thinking of.
Here, Didion does not tell the Southerner anything they don't already know -- I knew most of the places she stayed at; I could visualize Bob Evans and I've never even seen the man-- but she does tell the non-Southerners a lot. She questions the north/west's supposed superiority on racial issues and, through her interviews with the locals where she stops, shows that the leg work of fighting a 400-year old, unimaginably conniving system, is being done in the South.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book and am excited to read more Didion.
Very short and fragmentary, but it's still Didion.
reflective
medium-paced
I feel like every stereotypical depiction of the Southern United States that I, a native Californian descended from colonizers, was raised on was represented in this book. A little curious, because when you leave Los Angeles, San Francisco or any of the other major California cities, you're not exactly traversing through diverse, industrialized environments. I'm specifically looking at the farmlands of Sacramento, where Didion hails from. Nevertheless, she received the South as another world entirely.
Perhaps I am reading this book with 2024 hindsight. Perhaps Didion genuinely believed, as I was taught, that we out West were spared the racism narrative. News flash, we weren't.
Ultimately I do wonder, was there a way to have searched for the shared humanity inherent in both the Southern and Western experiences instead of othering the others and ending up sitting on all this hate in the 21st century?
All of that being said, I felt relieved to embark on that return flight with her. As always, the writing was sublime and storytelling was superb.
Perhaps I am reading this book with 2024 hindsight. Perhaps Didion genuinely believed, as I was taught, that we out West were spared the racism narrative. News flash, we weren't.
Ultimately I do wonder, was there a way to have searched for the shared humanity inherent in both the Southern and Western experiences instead of othering the others and ending up sitting on all this hate in the 21st century?
All of that being said, I felt relieved to embark on that return flight with her. As always, the writing was sublime and storytelling was superb.
Lovely book, easy to listen to, insights that can be applied to today everywhere you go.
Le prendo velas a Joan Didion, aún cuando estos solo sean apuntes.
Este librito ha tenido varias críticas basadas en que no había necesidad de que viera la luz: no está terminado, solo son apuntes de un cuaderno de la escritora.
Y aún así, no puedo dejar de conmoverme con su prosa. ¡Que me escriba hasta las instrucciones para hacer panquecas, por favor!
#ParaTiSiTeGusta cómo narra Joan Didion o tienes curiosidad sobre sus apuntes.
Este librito ha tenido varias críticas basadas en que no había necesidad de que viera la luz: no está terminado, solo son apuntes de un cuaderno de la escritora.
Y aún así, no puedo dejar de conmoverme con su prosa. ¡Que me escriba hasta las instrucciones para hacer panquecas, por favor!
#ParaTiSiTeGusta cómo narra Joan Didion o tienes curiosidad sobre sus apuntes.
This book was at times very entertaining, but overall underwhelming. It mostly felt like the publisher was looking for a new book by Joan Didion to publish.