2.5
instead of a memoir, this is more of a historical account of didion’s heritage and ancestry in california. i can imagine this would be interesting to some, particularly native californians who would enjoy learning about the history of their home state, but unfortunately it wasn’t what i was looking for, nor what i was expecting due to this book being labelled as joan didion’s ‘first ever memoir’, which it isn’t. if you’re looking for a memoir by joan didion, i’d highly recommend  the year of magical thinking. but there’s no denying that didion is a fantastic writer, and i enjoyed the last 50 or so pages the most.

Me ha gustado mucho, sobre todo los textos escritos en los 60 y 70, me parecen mucho más atrevidos que los últimos de la selección. Pero su voz es alucinante. Estoy deseando leer "El año del pensamiento mágico". Sí, sí. Muy fan.

Joan Didion strikes me as being one of the smartest writers in America, with a firm but quiet authority that makes me trust her absolutely. She is also probably the last social commentator in America who is not shouting with little rivulets of mad-dog spittle flying from the corners of her mouth.

Sometimes the book was truly thought-changing for me in not only how I regard California, but how I regard the whole westward expansion aspect of the USA. I live in Fort Wayne, IN – once the hot center of the military-trading frontier and characterized by all of the usual boondoggles, chicanery, and rapaciousness. To see this carried on to the Golden Gate was a bit depressing – in fact, by the time we had “expanded” to California, the federal apparatus had become very sophisticated and prevalent in a way that dwarfs the knee-britches and coonskin cap crudities of Indiana settlement. Damn the railroads. And aero-space. And, er, and thank God for them too, I guess. Whence goeth California, so goeth the country?

Ah, but I digress. One of my favorite moments in this book was when one of my favorite military historians, Victor Davis Hansen, a Californian like Didion, and like Didion the product of wealthy pioneer ranch-owning stock, came under Didion’s pitiless gaze. Hansen has long rhapsodized about how he still lives on and to some extent works the ranch, contrasting his rooted-to-the-soil rootedness with the shallow narcissistic lives lead by other Americans. Because of my enormous respect for him, I always took all these things he said as gospel. But Didion calmly and rationally takes Hansen’s supposed pioneering spirit and reduces it to a smoldering pile of historical wishful-thinking. California is and pretty much always has been a heavily subsidized, self-satisfied and self-delusional product of a whole bunch of Federal interference --dam-building and corporate gimmees (first the railroads, then military-avionics, crop subsidies, etc.). The Donner Party had to eat their dead (and not-quite-dead-yets) but once they got to the Golden State, things got a lot easier for many of them. This is a gross simplification of Didion’s calm handling of facts. I was uncomfortable to see Hansen get exposed like this…he rebutted, I presume, somewhere…but Didion did it without getting shrill for even a moment. And her logic, and her facts, seemed dead-on.

I mean to read more of Didion’s work…my only (wildly unfair) complaint about her is that she often writes about stuff I don’t give a tinker’s damn about (California, for instance – although she made me interested finally. But I had to stop reading her book on Miami, so absolutely bogged down and bored I became in the Cuban expat political scene). Sort of like the way the New Yorker’s best writer, Joan Accocela (I spelt that wrong, I know) covers, mostly, dance! But good writing is its own reward. Didion is a master. There is this weird melancholy aspect to her prose that is unique to her – it lends a gravity to what she writes that is missing in that of most other cultural commentators. She’s one of the few famous contemporary writers I would like to know.

This was a tough book to get through, often dull, frequently depressing. Didion, a Sacramento-area native, examines the myth of the Calfornia Dream. She provides ample evidence that state residents are self-deluded and that their values frequently contradict (ie: believing we are anti-government mavericks, yet being reliant on the DOD for so many jobs). The book is well-researched and accounts of the media coverage of the "Spur Posse" and the number of prisons and insane asyllums in the state (that the penal system frequently received more funds than public schools!) are shocking and disturbing. Ultimately, this is a sad wake-up call for those who believe Calfornia is somehow immune to the nation's ills or has been "ruined" by "outsiders." The Golden Past is only real in a reminiscier's memory.

Perfect cure for norcal/central valley homesickness. My brain loves history told in narrative/non-draining biographical form, and my soul yearns for Joan Didion. Insane how Didion can weave together journalistic inquiries into California's carceral system, the state's cultural relationship to land, railroads, and the San Joaquin River into an overarching exploration of her own familial history. I am a sucker for the last 2 pages of a book, endings mean everything to me in many forms, and these do not disappoint. Now, I am not sure if I'd have such a rave review for this book if I had not been using it as a vehicle for my own desire for home, but I don't think that makes this review any less valid. Books are awesome

“There was no believable comfort I could offer my mother: she was right. They were all old men and it was all San Jose.”

of course i loved it but probably my least favorite Didion —the early essays feel a bit disparate and unfocused, full of names and dates. ultimately comes together, however, as her analysis of California switches from pure history to an understanding of where the state is heading (and who it is leaving behind). final chapters regarding her mother make for a strong companion to The Year of Magical Thinking. naturally i cried.

It's eerie how, decades later, Didion and her mother's concerns about our home state echo my mother and I's. I'm only giving this three stars because it took me a long time to get through and was more historical than I thought it would be. The long sections on the Oregon Trail, railroads, and aerospace were not particularly interesting to me, but Didion effectively lays out the "confusions and contradictions of California life." I enjoyed reading the memoir and personal history threads the most. As a part-time East Coaster, her passage on 204 about "Then home, there, where I was from, me, California" resonated beautifully. The last chapter and final line are haunting.

I read this when it first came out. I returned to it yesterday specifically to read the second part of the book, the part about Lakewood and how the Spur Posse came to be. To my mind, there is no better reporter than Joan Didion, no better essayist. She has what used to be called "a way with words." She has the rare ability to zone in on the particular details that make a story compelling. (She can do no wrong.)

As with so many books I’ve read lately, I spent weeks leafing through the first pages and a day devouring the rest.

Like Slouching Towards Bethlehem, I picked this up to hold on to something of home while I’d be away. And, just as with Slouching, this book has kept home in my mind and at my fingertips as I’d hoped it would.

More thoughts to come, of course. For now all I can say is this: I miss you, California.

Didn’t enjoy this one, but maybe I just don’t care about California.

he disfrutado especialmente de los dos primeros tercios del libro, que incluyen los ensayos y artículos de los años 60 y 70: el movimiento hippie, su relación con las distintas dimensiones de California (Hollywood vs el interior del estado, de donde procedía la autora), sus años en Nueva York. Destaco “Sobre tener un cuaderno de notas”, “Adiós a todo aquello”, Agua bendita” y “Georgia O’Keeffe”.

In equal parts biography of her family and biography of the state of California, Didion takes you along a journey into the various twists of California history.

By interspersing family stories and other California history, Didion paints a vivid picture of California and how it came to be. From the gold rush and railroad building to California prisons to making references to her previous fiction book, Run River, and how it connects to everything she has written prior.

I am not one who knows much about the history of California. I have only been to the West Coast once, and I was like 6 at the time and do not remember anything. I have wanted to go to California since I was a kid but haven’t had the chance to go. I am an east coaster born and raised, and my knowledge of California is limited both in what I’ve read and what I’ve been formally educated with. Aside from the brief history of the California gold rush, Japanese internment camps during WW2, and their extensive prison system, my knowledge of California, both in its settlement and founding and its current history, is limited. Didion does a great job of giving an overviewed look at California with all its complexities in a few short reportage chapters.

I enjoyed all the writing of how California is reliant, at least in its beginning, on industry. The industries change as the landscape of America and the West Coast change and California has to adjust to keep up, and she expertly conveys these swift changes to the working class.

The book was interesting, a bit slow for me personally, but for those who are interested in California, this is a great way to familiarize yourself with the area, the history, and a bit of the politics.