I am almost done with this tome of non-fiction from one of my favorite writers. Before this book, I had only read The Year of Magical Thinking (which I *loved*) but Didion had always held a certain fascination for me because I had the hugest crush on Ed O'Brien of Radiohead for the longest time and he said Joan Didion was his favorite writer and his dream woman. So of course I set about finding out who this lady was, and whether she was worthy of this praise. :) The crush has long since faded (though I still think he's dreamy) but my crush on Didion continues unabated. This collection is a particular gift to lazy types like myself; I know I would have found it such a pain to acquire all of her non-fiction separately, and in chronological order, so I'm very glad Everyman did it for me. My favorite essays so far include "On Self-Respect", "Goodbye to all That", "In the Islands" and "Pacific Distances", but really it's like picking a favorite child. Some essays do nothing for me, but I still love the way they're written. So... yeah. Read Didion.

I can't even start to explain every little feeling that this collection of essays evoked in me but it's breathtaking and compelling and also painstakingly sharp and soothing at the same time. I suck at writing reviews I guess you need to read this for yourselves.

Dit is vast een belangrijk boek, maar wat mij betreft te incrowderig met heel veel namen en instituties die me niets zeggen en me ook nooit iets gezegd hebben. Alsof ik een oude De Groene Amsterdammer zat te lezen over Bill Clinton als seksueel geïnspireerd mens, over verkrachtingen en media, of John Wayne als rolmodel. Allemaal reuze interessant, maar je moet toch voort in het leven. En als Didion nou een geweldige stiliste was geweest, dan had ik me daar misschien nog overheen gezet, maar meeslepend schrijft zo ook al niet. Daarom ben ik halverwege afgehaakt.

This is the most amazingly clear writing that I've ever read. Didion writes what she observes, clearly and precisely. She doesn't use judgmental words, but since she writes so clearly about her subjects, we can get an idea of what she thinks about said subjects.
I'm not yet finished with this collection, but will tell you that as a younger baby boomer, reading "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" gave me a better, nonglamorous picture of the sixties than anything else I've ever read.
As an aspiring writer, this is someone I wish to emulate.

Aanbevolen voor wie fan is van USA. Nauwkeurige en objectieve beschrijving van de tijdsgeest van een bepaalde periode.

Soms wil ik Joan even over haar rug aaien.

Because I've read every available word of Didion in various forms, the only reason for my owning this book is to have it all in a single volume. In that, it fulfills my expectations. I didn't expect, however, that I'd be so in love with the writing that I'd reread it all. Oh, and the John Leonard intro is precisely the right tone.

First, a disclaimer: having read Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, and Where I Was From before, I skipped those sections of the anthology and read the parts I hadn't seen before.

Joan Didion is a first-class writer and journalist, so much so that even reading today about the behind-the-scenes intrigues of a 25-year-old Los Angeles mayoral race remains gripping.

Her best journalistic virtue is not that she gets the scoop that nobody else gets, but that she reports the interesting things that all the reporters know but that they keep concealed because they would embarrass the reporters' fraternity or they wouldn't fit the formula or the reporters aren't savvy enough to know that what interests them would also interest their readers if only they knew how to convey it.

Not for her is "the genuflection toward 'fairness'"

...a familiar newsroom piety, in practice the excuse for a good deal of autopilot reporting and lazy thinking but in theory a benign ideal. ...[W]hat 'fairness' has often come to mean is a scrupulous passivity, an agreement to cover the story not as it is occurring but as it is presented, which is to say as it is manufactured.

Didion doesn't passively report "what was said" at the press conference, but how the press conference came about, how the reporters came to be there, what they said amongst themselves, the things they decided not to report. She has an eye for the telling moment, against those who are content to be an amplifying or distorting medium for the message, who "prefer the theoretical to the observable, and [who] dismiss that which might be learned empirically as 'anecdotal.'"

If she has a fault, it's that the sophistication and ironic distance that give her the depth of field she needs to brutally criticize modern political campaigns or the bland hagiography of a Bob Woodward puts her out of her depth when she encounters a situation where earnest simplicity is more called for -- something she noticed when she tried to cover the civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s:

I knew how to interpret, the kind of inductive irony, the detail that was supposed to illustrate the story. As I wrote it down I realized that I was no longer much interested in this kind of irony, that this was a story that would not be illuminated by such details, that this was a story that would perhaps not be illuminated at all, that this was perhaps even less a "story" than a true noche obscura. As I waited to cross back over the Boulevard de los Heroes to the Camino Real I noticed soldiers herding a young civilian into a van, their guns at the boy's back, and I walked straight ahead, not wanting to see anything at all.

Pretty great little essays from Ms. Didion.


She sure is a smarty-pants about Miami and el Salvador! Not as much fun as her youthful bikini trip to the grocery store and hanging out with Janis Joplin and the Doors, but still good stuff.

Nice for small bits every few days.

I'm sorry, but I had to abandon this and return it to the library. Three weeks for twenty five years was plenty, and I'd like to read the rest but it just wasn't as great as her early writing. I'm sure it's better in some ways, but . . . meh.

This big fat collection clocks in at over 1100 pages and comprises the seven books of Didion's nonfiction that appeared between 1968 and 2003. These are

Slouching Towards Bethlehem
The White Album
Salvador
Miami
After Henry
Political Fictions
Where I Was From

What can I add to what's already been said about Joan Didion's writing? The standard review cliches come to mind - spare, taut, elegant, polished, not a word out of place.

All true. And yet, I admire these pieces, but I don't love them. There's a coldness at the core of Didion's writing that terrifies me. She regards everything within her line of vision (herself included) with unflinching, unforgiving clarity and delivers her verdict. Nothing ever really measures up. Reading these pieces exhausts me.

I recommend this collection, but only in small doses.

Unbelievable book. Incredible collection of many of her non- fiction books and essays including Slouching TB, White Album, Salvador, Miami. A collection every reader should own to underline and reread. There's so much here-- Didion's first book STB sets the high standards for her writing. The iconic White Album- especially the first section-- should be gone over repeatedly for content and Didion's hidden meanings. This is a wonderful book to begin a collection of Didion's as everyone should do.

We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live is a collection of Didion's nonfiction work, including Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, Salvador, Miami, After Henry, Political Fictions, and Where I Was From, stopping in 2003 before the deaths of her husband and daughter. I got bogged down in the more historical and political essay collections and took a long break after Miami but picked it back up and finished reading.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album are stellar, with Didion's sparse and biting prose describing the way of life and climate of the 1960's. Didion's essays on more personal topics, like keeping a journal, are insightful and interesting. Where I Was From comes back to this theme and is the later of Didion's work that I enjoyed best.

The more historical and political focused ones are less interesting. I'm not sure if I got bogged down in Didion's somewhat indignant tone or maybe the actions of the United States in the latter half of the 20th century are just going to be very depressing. In Political Fictions especially, with the focus American politics of the 1990's, Didion took a heavy hand in condemning those involved. It's justly deserved criticism, but lacks the variety in topic of some of Didion's other work.

I'm glad I stuck with this one, and Slouching Towards Bethlehem I would definitely read again.