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After Henry

joan didion

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In her latest forays into the American scene, Joan Didion covers ground from Washington to Los Angeles, from a TV producer's gargantuan "manor" to the racial battlefields of New York's criminal courts. At each stop she uncovers the mythic narratives that elude other observers: Didion tells us about the fantasies the media construct around crime victims and presidential candidates; she gives us new interpretations of the stories of Nancy Reagan and Patty Hearst; she charts America's rollercoaster ride through evanescent booms and hard times that won't go away. A bracing amalgam of skepticism and sympathy, After Henry is further proof of Joan Didion's infallible radar for the true spirit of our age.

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1992

This edition

Format
320 pages, Paperback
Published
April 27, 1993 by Vintage
ISBN
ASIN
Language
English

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About the author

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joan didion

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Joan Didion was an American writer and journalist. She is considered one of the pioneers of New Journalism along with Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe.
Didion's career began in the 1950s after she won an essay contest sponsored by Vogue magazine. Over the course of her career, Didion wrote essays for many magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post, Life, Esquire, The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. Her writing during the 1960s through the late 1970s engaged audiences in the realities of the counterculture of the 1960s, the Hollywood lifestyle, and the history and culture of California. Didion's political writing in the 1980s and 1990s often concentrated on the subtext of political rhetoric and the United States's foreign policy in Latin America. In 1991, she wrote the earliest mainstream media article to suggest the Central Park Five had been wrongfully convicted. In 2005, Didion won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for The Year of Magical Thinking, a memoir of the year following the death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne. She later adapted the book into a play that premiered on Broadway in 2007. In 2013, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by president Barack Obama. Didion was profiled in the Netflix documentary The Center Will Not Hold, directed by her nephew Griffin Dunne, in 2017.

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Community Reviews

Rating(4.1 / 5.0, 100 votes)
5 stars
37(37%)
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35(35%)
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28(28%)
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100 reviews All reviews
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madokahiru
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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This collection made me so homesick for a state that I don’t even like that much. Didion’s California feels at once foreign and so photographically accurate that even while reading this from Ohio, I can sense the familiar dry heat of the Santa Ana winds against my back.
tIf you decide read this, get ready to LAUGH and get ready to FEEL! And please do decide to read it...
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mauvepeony
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Joan Didion can write about how the glue used in phone books in the 60's was developed and she'll find an interesting angle, an interesting way to make it relevant. She'll find a poignant element and flesh out the rest of the essay, coloring it with the time period and the people populated by it. Her voice is so urbane and refined that sometimes reaching her more caustic points and observations is like swallowing needles in honey. While I didn't enjoy this collection as much as others, I do feel that her piece about the Central Park jogger case of 1989 was outstanding. Her ability to assess, describe, and finely sum up a person with such an economy of words is enviable.
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Blockpoker
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Didion's most California-centric and boring collection I've come across. There are still a few great essays in here.
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animangaline
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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As strong as WHITE ALBUM and stronger than BETHLEHEM: Didion finds profound truths in that morass of malaise, the American Late 80s.
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LowanRaekan
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I'm rounding the final corner on my year-long Didion deep-dive (I bought the Library of America collections "The 1960s & 70s" and "The 1980s & 90s" to save a few bucks and some shelf space, and this book is the penultimate book in the latter volume). Her skill as an essayist is unparalleled - she was equally talented at crafting long, winding sentences that draw you in and demand a reread as she was at short, evocative, declarative statements.

The reason I'm only giving this 4-stars is that sometimes the laser focus of her insight is actually a bit distancing, when, as a reader, you are not familiar enough with the topic under discussion. This collection, grouped into three sections - Washington, California, New York - veered a bit too far "Inside Baseball" for me, especially in a few of the pieces in the "California" section; I could appreciate what she was doing, but I can't say I understood all of the backstories and their relative importance. However, as a New Yorker, I was immensely grateful to read, for the first time, the extended, thoughtful piece on the Central Park Five, the 1989 rape case that captivated the city and exposed all manner of implicit and overt assumptions about race, policing, safety, and what makes New York New York.

As with all of Didion's essay collections though, it's worth a read whether or not you know much about the topics she covers - her talent with prose will more than make up for any putative lack of context that might hinder you.
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theothersophie
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Didion writes with a clarity and grace usually found only in pure mountain spring water. These essays are a delight.
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Brittanymariew
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Having read several books by Didion in the past year and really loving here first book of essays, I knew sticking out this difficult book would be worth it, but it was a challenge. I didn’t find much worth in the first 219 pages. I wasn’t all to interested in the world of name dropping, soiree’s and politics she found herself in in the late 80s. Her writing was so specific And lacked context for me to engage in the events she was writing on and ultimately I just didn’t care.

However, the final essay on the history of Los Angeles and specifically the LA Times was interesting and the final section of “New York Sentimental Journals” is very timely and fascinating ideas on systemic racism and a look at the Central Park five case which has been in the news again in recent years because of Mr Trump’s disgusting involvement.

Glad I didn’t start my Didion dive with this one...otherwise I probably wouldn’t have finished the book and may not have given her another chance too soon.
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Sinishi
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I can never get enough of Joan Didion. An observer of both sides and a collector of facts and history.
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