I have read Joan Didion’s work here and there in the magazines, and what she wrote always made me think twice on issues. Then, when I got my hands on this book, I was delighted, and as the result of my reading it, I uttered a “Wow!”

On the matters she wrote about, Joan Didion was deeply informed and her ideas are witty, individualistic, and even revolutionary, not to mention that she has an excellent grasp of the language and uses it masterfully.

She was a Californian who had a love affair with her state; although she didn’t shy away from putting it down either when the opportunity and truth encouraged it.

Her in-depth look into the Haight-Ashbury counterculture, although she was a part of it but not much more than an observer, was a revelation to me. Her intense observation of the characters she met, the drug culture, and disrespect of women in that culture are phenomenal. She says she went to San Francisco because, with everything happening in the world at the time, her writing felt like an inappropriate act. I am glad she changed her mind later.

Just to give an idea of her observing and writing prowess, she says, about the activists: “They are children who have moved around a lot, San Jose, Chula Vista, here. They are less in rebellion against the society than ignorant of it, able only to feed back certain of its most publicized self-doubts, Vietnam, diet pills, the Bomb.
They feed back exactly what is given them. Because they do not believe in words — words are for “typeheads,” Chester Anderson tells them, and a thought which needs words is just another ego trip — their only proficient vocabulary is in the society’s platitudes.”

The book contains too many essays to comment about them in a short summary, but some of the essays in the book that have left a lasting impression on me are: "On Keeping a Notebook," "On Self-Respect," "On Morality," "Notes from a Native Daughter," and the sections on her San Francisco experiences.

She says she placed herself in the essays for the readers’ sake, so they know what she says is what she experienced and her writing is not hearsay.

If this is not true journalistic essay writing, I don’t know what is.

Learning about the bygone eras, although I was alive during the times Didion writes about.

just about everything but especially her very personal and private look at events

is Joan Didion, the writer of five novels and seven previous books of nonfiction: Where I Was From, Political Fictions, The Last Thing He Wanted, After Henry, Miami, Democracy, Salvador, A Book of Common Prayer, and Run River.

She was a very good writer.

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Created Jan 17, 2019 at 7:54pm • Submit your own review...