this is the book that contains the essay, "why i write," which i have read and is why i want to read the rest of the book. BUY IT FOR ME :)

I really like the way Didion writes. She has a clever perspective that can be refreshing. Her essays are conversational and call on one's imagination to fully comprehend the reason for her sharing her experiences. She reminds me of an artist. I rated this book 3 stars because I cannot relate to her as much as I would like to, but I do enjoy perusing the book for metaphors.

"Why I Write" alone is worth 5-stars. I love the way Didion thinks, getting this peak into her mind was a real treat.

I just started reading The Sentence after a bunch of Didion essays, conversations and notes and the book makes a reference to Joan's biography. Random, spooky, the reference is contained in a chapter about an eccentric, dainty lady continuing to visit a bookstore after passing as a specter.

These essays form a wonderful tapestry of existential and metaphysical outrospections on how we find and create meaning in life, routinely bringing it back to the foundational philosophical expressed in Hamlet's soliloquy. The "conversations" section forms a solid basis for the essays (in addition to Didion's publications). They open with Brady's effective primer on geography and historiography in Didion's works (and western writers in general). That is to say "the period of social and economic change to be the cutting edge of California's destiny as a land made by people who 'wanted things and got them.' The energies of her characters dissipate into indecision and crippling self-doubts when the mantle of Eldorado slips from their grasp and they have to confront the obsolescence of their old world."

Mallon then focuses on this conflict between the characters' changing conceptions of history and how it fails to lead to their present circumstances. He and Wilcox discusses the playfulness of the narrative strategy where the tragedy is given right away for the reader to question how to square the various narrator's rendition of accounts with how events add up. The latter expands this analysis to explicitly holy analogy. California "resembled the holy land" before this image of history "collapsing into a blank 'quintessential intersection of nothing.'" This lays a framework for the roles of the narrators/ analysand/ witness and the reader of the texts.

Friedman discusses the doom and gloom worldview present in the writings (for they are warnings for her self after all) and Henderson is very helpful in piecing together the significance of each prayer, bible verse, and epic through the novels. (The reference to Parzival neglecting to ask the magic question "What ails you, uncle?" because he has been taught that a true knight does not ask personal question" clarifies a lot).

Geherin's and Chabot's exploration of Camus and Ellison and Sartre and other existentialists I have difficulty with is much appreciated. I must admit I greatly appreciate the former's more optimistic outlook. My absolute favorite entry, by Wolff, contains my absolute favorite bit of these analyses comes in discussing a silly didactic story about a man who leaves his abode to take a walk in the desert and converse with God, only for the man to be bitten by a rattlesnake and pass. The heroine ponders briefly whether the man did indeed talk to God, then whether God replied. Truly the best takes on Play It As It Lays.

Romano's essay is a love letter to the wonderful Charlotte Douglas character which is built on by Strandberg's rave review of A Book of Common Prayer, elevating it to the heights and worthy comparisons to Gatsby. Hollowell does a Death of the Author reading, diving into the influences of Didion's reporting in El Salvador had on the novel while Malin explores the stateside connections. Kiley then reflects on these writings and her The White Album as a second coming of Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Really well put together collection.