I spent four & a half months trudging through this collection...there were entire months where I didn't even glance at it. While some of Didion's nonfiction essays & stories were fantastic, others left me unimpressed. Overall, a mixed bag. Proceed with caution, or read Didion's A Year of Magical Thinking instead!

Lucid, brave writing from a "reporter of life" who has never hesitated to tackle the toughest stories - even her own.

By way of commentary, I can do no better than to direct everyone to this piece from The New Yorker, "Out of Bethlehem: The Radicalization of Joan Didion" by Louis Menand. Ostensibly a review of Tracy Daugherty’s "The Last Love Song" (St. Martin’s), a biography of Joan Didion, this article is really an overview of Didion's career and the evolution of her world view. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...

The only thing I would like to add is this quote from John Leonard in his introduction to this collection: "...I have been trying forever to figure out why her sentences are better than mine and yours ... something about cadence. They come at you, if not from ambush, then in gnomic haikus, icepick laser beams, or waves. Even the space on the page around these sentences is more interesting than it ought to be, as if to square a sandbox for a Sphinx." Yes! This is what makes her prose so compelling. Even in the early pieces that make me distinctly uncomfortable, like her sensationalized portrayal of the counterculture, or the Black Panthers, or her (especially) wrong headed dismissal of radical feminism, I find it hard to shake off that prose and certainly will not forget it. Of course, this makes it all the more delicious when she turned her focus to the emptiness behind the traditional picture of the American Dream (especially California Style), to the dissection of US foreign policy in Central America, and to dismantling the Political Class in America and their media sycophants. It is the quality of her prose style that places her among the greats of the New Journalism, along side Hunter S. Thompson; it also makes me want to find the time to read some of her fiction.

I read Play It as It Lays as a younger woman and really liked it. Joan Didion seems to be newly-admired by a certain cool segment of a younger population. She is very cool that is for sure. Cold. The famous scene where she talks to the kindergartner in Haight-Ashbury who has been given LSD. And that is just one of the most obvious examples. Are we just supposed to admire the random beauty of the words. I just kept telling myself reassuringly "You are smart enough to get this." How did she evoke that thought in me? Or do some smart people enjoy the testing?
Is it reductive for me to wonder where all this coldness ended up in the author? Of course we know from her more recent books. To be fair, I could reread them and it might make me more kind and understanding but I still would not enjoy this book.
Maybe it is the past year of a pandemic but I find this extremely wearying. The manipulation without meaning. The performance. I need something more.

Leyendo a Wolfe, Thompson y Capote me he venido enamorando del non fiction. Finalmente llegué a Joan Didion y no he podido superar su trabajo. Me obsesiona la forma en la que escribe, su estilo, lo fino y trabajado, lo desapegada y a la vez intimista que me resulta su prosa. Hay libros que me han hecho replantearme las cosas que quiero hacer, este definitivamente es uno de ellos.

I'm a fan of Didion. This compilation of all (?) of her books is only tedious in the detail describing some of the recent past events she covered as a journalist. Maybe the history is too recent to engage me as much as the length of her writing commands. In other words, I like the stuff about her personal life more than the stuff about Miami, more than her disapproval of Bill Clinton's campaigning. (I've been there and I don't care to read any more beating of Bill. On today's political playing field, even criticism from 15 years ago, when we were comparatively blissfully ignorant, is best left on the shelf.)

De titel in het Engels is: We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live.
Die zegt alles.
Fabuleuze verhalenverteller van onze tijd.

The type is way too small but I struggled through because she is such an excellent writer! I wish I had read every single one of these when they were first published. Loved her take on LA and NYC. Loved her take on politics and El Salvador. All if it rings so exactly true. Every page I would just shake my head at her insight. I definitely need the large print version. I learned way too much about Miami - yikes.

Huge collection of her articles I've been leafing through for the past few months. Its so good though I stopped just reading at home and taken to lugging this 1000+ page hardback around with me to read on my commute to work. Her indepth writing on the Clinton/Lewinsky/Ken Starr debacle is brilliant.

I hate to call this book a slog, but my god. At 1100+ pages and dense topics to cover, it took me a very, very long time to finish this anthology.

Didion is massively important to the American canon. I am rather ashamed I never read her before. That being said, while I would implore everyone to read her, I would caution against reading this. We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live contains 7 of her books. While each one is an interesting compilation of articles, reading them all together over the span of 1.5 months was a lot, especially considering the depressing realities Didion is touching on.

Slouching Toward Bethlehem is an excellent collection of how the end of the 1960s rocked the nation. It touches on senseless crime, on drugs, on the listlessness that can set in.

The White Album becomes more of an introspective. Didion writes some personal essays, but still stays true to her reporting background.

Salvador is investigative journalism through-and-through, with some Didion flair inserted for good measure.

Miami I didn't much like, I have to say.

After Henry sort of drags a bit, since I do not care about the celebrities of yesteryear.

Political Fictions was infuriating. In a good way. Nothing has *&$(%*@(# changed in American politics in the past 30 years.

Where I was From Is memoir-esque, and I'm sure good on its own. But after reading everything preceding it all I really wanted was a nap.

So read her, but pick one up one at a time, and leave some space between. Didion has some amazing insights and observations to share with us, but we need to be able to pay attention.

Joan Didion's writing is so good, I find myself reading about things I wouldn't think I would care about in the least-say, for instance, the Operations Control Center for the California State Water Project (in an essay titled Holy Water) and think, "Wow. That's completely fascinating."

There are way too many stand-out quotes in this collection, but here's an example:

"I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget." (On Keeping A Notebook)

Ah, where to begin when it comes to Didion. I adore her. Plus, when she was younger she was totally smokin'! I sh*t you not. Go google some photos of the broad. Hottttttt! And intelligence. I'm a bigger sucker for intelligence.

I've read a few of the books in this collection on their own, but once this collected essay edition came out I peed my pants. All of this Didion in one place? It's like a dream come true for me.