Slouching Towards Bethlehem:
Essays (FSG Classics) by Joan
Didion
Didion Is A Writer's Writer
The first nonfiction work by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our
era, Slouching Towards Bethlehem remains, forty years after its first
publication, the essential portrait of America— particularly California—in
the sixties. It focuses on such subjects as John Wayne and Howard
Hughes, growing up a girl in California, ruminating on the nature of good
and evil in a Death Valley motel room, and, especially, the essence of San
Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture.
Personal Review: Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays (FSG
Classics) by Joan Didion
I am reminded how important it is -- necessary, curative -- to have my own
beliefs and opinions disrupted by this book. I love this book all over again,
so much, that I am assigning this book to students in a critical thinking
class at my college. I have used it successfully in the past, and have
learned that contemporary readers have no trouble dealing with Didion's
historical references. Historical references, I said with my jaw-dropped the
first time a student complained about this. My thinking was that Didion is

contemporary. And she is -- just read her. For an 18 year old born in
1991, the unrest of 1968 seems as long ago as the Civil War. To my
colleagues, stop scolding students for using the internet. Bring it into any
book discussion. In a "smart classroom," equipped with an online
computer and a projection screen, I hot link any of Didion's lessor known
references to the voices and people she mentions, captured by hand-held
cameras and recording devices 41 years ago, uploaded more recently by
cathode ray addicted teenagers onto their online social networks. Whew.
Young readers are natural researchers; they spend most of their free time
connecting bits of information. They are bored easily, too. That's why
Didion is really great. She is as fresh and demanding and observant and
as thankfully disruptive as they aim to be by pointing their cell phone
cameras at the world, hitting click, then send. They like her for her daring
and even more for her restraint -- something that few writers know how to
use. I have to thank writer Tom Carson for his reminder of just how good
Didion is -- and how current she is -- in his "Los Angeles Magazine" review
of Evan Wright's book of essays, Hella Nation Hella Nation: Looking for
Happy Meals in Kandahar, Rocking the Side Pipe, Wingnut's WarAgainst
the GAP, and Other Adventures with the Totally Lost Tribes of America. I
don't know if Amazon lets reviewers link to outside content, but I hope the
company will allow me to credit my source. Tom Carson's essay is very
good:
[...]
Carson's review makes me want to buy the books he mentions in hand or
by the "kindle," a term that anyone who likes Didion has already worried to
death. Carson puts Evan Wright's "Hella Nation" on the same shelf with
Joan Didion's "Slouching Towards Bethlehem." Generally, I am
disappointed by anyone saying that a new writer comes close to Didion. I
am ridiculously angry, but not so this time. Evan Wright's account of our
invasion of Iraq Generation Kill was outstanding, but for some reason I did
not know his work as an essayist until I bought Hella Nation for medicinal
reasons -- as an antidote to my television news addiction that occurred
during the G20 Summit. The photograph on the cover reminded me of the
G20 protesters in London who were being "kettled," almost as bad
sounding as the term as "kindled," by the British police. Surely, Wright
must have schooled himself on Didion. There is in my mind a mother - son
bond between them. I am in no way a lurker at book signings, although I
do attend them (politely, front row, nervous but prepared with a good
question), but I do feel a visceral connection to writers' works. I organize
"my writers" into a kind of family tree from which I remarkably descend,
and rise out of myself. In short, I'm just another crazy fan. Truly, if I could
had never read "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," I would be cheated from
experiencing something magical in my otherwise dreary fate. Life without
Didion would be like Jane Eyre NOT returning to Thornfield. What's next
for this Didion freak? What else? I am going to read the other book Tom
Carson places on his shelf with Didion (and Wright): Tony Horwitz'
"Confederates in the Attic" Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the
Unfinished Civil War. Any other suggestions?

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