The White Album
by Joan Didion
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recommends it for:
non-believers, writers, feelers
It must say something that even though I'm shit-stuffed full after two and a half rounds of Thanksgiving plates of turkey and sides I feel compelled to review a book of essays I last read 6 years ago? That something may be: I don't have a girlfriend right now. Yes, the judges are willing to accept that as a correct answer. But they will also accept ' The White Album is a great book and Joan Didion is a great writer. And that answer is w...more
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Read in May, 2008
I've always thought that I was somehow naïve to some sort of greater truth about reality, or at least the United States, or at least California, because I had never read anything by Joan Didion. Friends and acquaintances and strangers spoke of her with a sort of ineloquent awe as if their own descriptions could never match her lucid prose or mental acuity.
Now that I have actually read her own words I want to know, what is all the fuss about? I find Barbara Grizzutti Harrison's 1980 essay much m...more
Now that I have actually read her own words I want to know, what is all the fuss about? I find Barbara Grizzutti Harrison's 1980 essay much m...more
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Read in July, 2008
Didion doesn't buy into all of that collectivist angst crap, but she is not without her own strange eccentricities. For example, when people give her Scientology books she puts them in a drawer instead of throwing them away because she wants to keep them but she doesn't want anyone to see them on her bookshelf and get the wrong idea, etc. Her view of the 1960s is a skeptical one. She is skeptical of the Black Panther party and of the Women's Movement. She is skeptical of "The Revolution&quo...more
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Read in March, 2004
recommends it for:
serial thinkers
This is a collection of essays by the great Joan Didion. I say "great" having only read this book, with the full knowledge that she wrote a lot of other stuff. But this book was great, and the rest of her work, if "The White Album" is any indication, must also be great.
She delves into a number of topics surrounding her life and the parts of it in the Golden State of California (also a little in Hawaii). The essays, though sometimes disjointed by time periods and far from...more
She delves into a number of topics surrounding her life and the parts of it in the Golden State of California (also a little in Hawaii). The essays, though sometimes disjointed by time periods and far from...more
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Whenever I think of "Slouching Toward Bethlehem," I flash to its most provocative images: The four-year-old tripping on LSD, dinner with John Wayne, the opening true-crime story about a murder-of-passion. Joan Didion always appears revolted by the state of things, as if the world is a bitter pill that she refuses to swallow, instead tonguing the capsule as it acidly dissolves.
"The White Album" isn't just a sequel collection, nor is it a mere extention of 60's reportage in...more
"The White Album" isn't just a sequel collection, nor is it a mere extention of 60's reportage in...more
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Read in March, 2008
This was my first Joan Didion book, and now I'm a little obsessed. I love how precise and crafted her sentences are, how she explores and writes about unique topics (orchid farming, Hoover Dam), and how invested she seems to be in everything she describes. More than just giving a fascinating portrait of California and the U.S. in the 1970's, Didion seems really committed to understanding and describing what it means to be a person in and of that time. The best books, I think, change my way of...more
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After her famous Slouching Toward Bethlehem, this is her next book in the same vein. It launched me onto my two year long Didion obsession durring which time I read everything she'd ever written. I even watched that horrible Redford movie she co-scripted the screenplay for. Didon is a consumate prose stylist. Like Poe or Williams her writing is almost a code, a denuded, sheer script that eludes the reader with its dead-pan incisiveness. But in the end I realized that her early works are so ...more
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Last year I read Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking," along with the rest of the world (one of those books everyone was reading on the subway), and then I read "Where I Was From", "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," and now this. So much about so many things--the J. Paul Getty Museum, water in California, freeways in LA in the 70's, all so California and so of the 60's and 70's, and from a viewpoint that is intelligent and informed and opinionated and not toeing any...more
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Read in July, 2008
So far, I love this book! Joan Didion writes these little, anecdotal essays that seemingly don't connect, but end up creating a vivid portrait of her time. From her eyes, as she sees it. Especially worthwhile are her descriptions of California water.
I think it's worth it to read Didion's accounts of California along with some of the more contemporary sociological accounts like Mike Davis's "City of Quartz." Didion's approach is a little more personable, totally seeped in the cult...more
I think it's worth it to read Didion's accounts of California along with some of the more contemporary sociological accounts like Mike Davis's "City of Quartz." Didion's approach is a little more personable, totally seeped in the cult...more
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Read in June, 2008
I wanted to read more of Joan Didion after being blown away by "The Year of Magical Thinking." I knew that this book was essays she wrote in the late '60s and '70s. I wasn't prepared for how out of context I felt reading them. I think I expected an experience more like "Across the Universe," that is, seeing the 60's through the lens of today. Watching that movie I felt it really captured the time period, but I could also relate to it. These essays feel like they really c...more
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They didn't have "Play it as it lays" at the library, nor did they have either of the books of D. Foster Wallace's essays that I want to read, so I compromised and got this. So far, it's good. Oh, and they didn't have "Slouching towards Bethlehem" either. Jerks. I love the Main Branch for a lot of reasons, but how do they let /four copies/ of "Consider the lobster" go missing? Really, that's what the computer says: "MISSING."
ps: I'm becoming lik...more
ps: I'm becoming lik...more
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I'm not sure I completely understand/agree with Didion's dismissal of revolutionary or activist movements of the 60's. Her criticism tends to be stand-offish at times, but is often disheartening and constructive. Her viewpoint is necessary, but it seems to me that she often misses the point of progressive movements and their appeal, and instead attaches her attention and focus to things that are completely irrelevant. Whether her essays are objective or subjective social observation, I can't dec...more
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Read in June, 2008
Even though these various California (and Hawaii) essays were written in the 70's, they are still relevant today - especially the essay about her fascination with the aqueduct system and the method of which we here in Southern Calfornia get our water. Also great reading is the story in which she sits in during a Doors recording session and the moment when Jim Morrison (finally) shows up. No one bats an eyelash and Joan's point of view, watching this happen, is classic. How cool!
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Jenn gave me a copy of this as a going away present last year. I read it on the cross-country drive and the first couple weeks after arriving. I'd finished "The Year of Magical Thinking" not long before and didn't know if I was ready for another Joan Didion, but these essays were pretty incredible - she has an almost methodical, deliberate approach to her subjects, this subtly intense curiosity drives her and is well-conveyed in her writing.
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Read in January, 1983
A teacher gave me this book, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and a collection of Ann Beattie short stories when I was in middle school. I am still so greatful to him because these books were like revelations to me. The White Album collects some of Didion's essays, categorized by: The White Album, California Republic, Women, Sojourns, and On the Morning After the Sixties. An insightful portrait of life and politics in the sixties and seveties.
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p. 65
many people I know persist in looking for psychoanalytical implications in this passion. As a matter of fact I have explored, in an amateur way, the more obvious of these implications, and come up with nothing interesting. A certain external reality remains, and resists interpretation.
p. 65
"The West begins," Bernard DeVoto wrote, "when the average annual rainfall drops below twenty inches."
many people I know persist in looking for psychoanalytical implications in this passion. As a matter of fact I have explored, in an amateur way, the more obvious of these implications, and come up with nothing interesting. A certain external reality remains, and resists interpretation.
p. 65
"The West begins," Bernard DeVoto wrote, "when the average annual rainfall drops below twenty inches."
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Read in January, 1999
recommends it for:
Women on the verge of a crisis
My first and favorite Joan Didion. You need to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown to truly appreciate this book. Didion has a knack for dialogue, a remnant of her life as a journalist. There is something refreshing but also brittle about her writing. This book together with Slouching Toward Bethlehem provides a fascinating look at 1960's California.
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Want to read some Didion based on this interview:
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am...
!!
"I’m pretty surprised that Joan Didion doesn’t loom larger than she does, since I really do think she’s the best writer alive — every time she finishes a sentence American literature gets that much better."
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am...
!!
"I’m pretty surprised that Joan Didion doesn’t loom larger than she does, since I really do think she’s the best writer alive — every time she finishes a sentence American literature gets that much better."
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Read in March, 2007
recommends it for:
Those with a dark side
Admittedly this collection doesn't totally stand the test of time, but Didion is as sharp in her perceptions as they come, and always eager to entertain dark passages. I'm obsessed with that recent period of American history in which political tilts ran extreme and cynical - the early Seventies. The title essay describes that time in Los Angeles.
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Read in November, 2007
recommends it for:
anyone with curiosity of the culture we live in
Fantastic narrative about the life and times of both significant and insignificant events and characters of the 1960s and 70s. Even the most dull subjects, eg water distribution plants, are made a pleasure to read about because of Didion's way of connecting them to herself and her past and her unique psychological awareness.
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book data (includes all editions)
avg rating (all editions): 4.22 (1041 ratings) avg rating (this edition): 4.24 (971 ratings) number of reviews: 85popular shelves
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