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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
There's a reason these Joan Didion notes weren't published around the time they were written: they're just notes. No narrative or character development, just raw notes. That's fine if you are looking to read poetry, but unsatisfying if you are reading this book because you loved something else Didion wrote and want to read a story.
informative
fast-paced
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
informative
medium-paced
Once again Didion captures the precise socio economic angst of the place and era she reports on. She needs little social commentary because the real time characters she shares make it crystal clear who they are and what they stand for. This is simply, an excellent book.
reflective
fast-paced
i can definitely see the appeal to this style of writing but it’s not something i’ll seek out again
I’m a bit drunk but I’ve got to say I just love the passages of description. Feels especially prescient following the election
adventurous
reflective
fast-paced
An unintentional thread through my recent reads: the writer's meticulous attention to detail. In this book, Didion's attention is directed towards the American South as she travels through several states. I listened to this on audiobook, so I'm curious about how the book is formatted in print, since the text is her notebook from these travels, rather than finished essays. Most of it still read like long excerpts from essays, though, with coherent thoughts, detailed scenes, and broad claims.
It's perhaps not fair to evaluate a person's notes, but the casual racism was jarring to listen to at times, since it often came descriptively, without commentary. The sexism less so, since this was followed by more reflection and critique.
My favorite parts were the moments of being immersed in scene. I was less certain about the sweeping claims Didion made about the South (and later, the West) as a whole, but she states these in such compelling language, that they were striking nonetheless.
"I had only some dim and unformed sense, a sense which struck me now and then, and which I could not explain coherently, that for some years the South and particularly the Gulf Coast had been for America what people were still saying California was, and what California seemed to me not to be: the future, the secret source of malevolent and benevolent energy, the psychic center."
"Southern girls are notoriously husband-hunting, but I guess that's the same anywhere. It occurred to me almost constantly in the South that had I lived there I would have been an eccentric and full of anger. And I wondered what form the anger would have taken. Would I have taken up causes? Or would I have simply knifed somebody?"
"I am trying to place myself in history. I have been looking all my life for history and have yet to find it... In the South they are convinced that they have bloodied their place with history. In the West we do not believe that anything we do can bloody the land, or change it, or touch it."
It's perhaps not fair to evaluate a person's notes, but the casual racism was jarring to listen to at times, since it often came descriptively, without commentary. The sexism less so, since this was followed by more reflection and critique.
My favorite parts were the moments of being immersed in scene. I was less certain about the sweeping claims Didion made about the South (and later, the West) as a whole, but she states these in such compelling language, that they were striking nonetheless.
"I had only some dim and unformed sense, a sense which struck me now and then, and which I could not explain coherently, that for some years the South and particularly the Gulf Coast had been for America what people were still saying California was, and what California seemed to me not to be: the future, the secret source of malevolent and benevolent energy, the psychic center."
"Southern girls are notoriously husband-hunting, but I guess that's the same anywhere. It occurred to me almost constantly in the South that had I lived there I would have been an eccentric and full of anger. And I wondered what form the anger would have taken. Would I have taken up causes? Or would I have simply knifed somebody?"
"I am trying to place myself in history. I have been looking all my life for history and have yet to find it... In the South they are convinced that they have bloodied their place with history. In the West we do not believe that anything we do can bloody the land, or change it, or touch it."
adventurous
challenging
funny
informative
reflective
medium-paced