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Where I Was From by Didion, Joan unknown Edition [Paperback(2004)]
In her moving and insightful new book, Joan Didion reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history and ours. A native Californian, Didion applies her scalpel-like intelligence to the state’s ethic of ruthless self-sufficiency in order to examine that ethic’s often tenuous relationship to reality.
Combining history and reportage, memoir and literary criticism, Where I Was From explores California’s romances with land and water; its unacknowledged debts to railroads, aerospace, and big government; the disjunction between its code of individualism and its fetish for prisons. Whether she is writing about her pioneer ancestors or privileged sexual predators, robber barons or writers (not excluding herself), Didion is an unparalleled observer, and her book is at once intellectually provocative and deeply personal.
Combining history and reportage, memoir and literary criticism, Where I Was From explores California’s romances with land and water; its unacknowledged debts to railroads, aerospace, and big government; the disjunction between its code of individualism and its fetish for prisons. Whether she is writing about her pioneer ancestors or privileged sexual predators, robber barons or writers (not excluding herself), Didion is an unparalleled observer, and her book is at once intellectually provocative and deeply personal.
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First published September 1, 2003
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About the author
Joan Didion
100 books16.8k followersJoan 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.
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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October 12, 2024
GIOIA E DISPERAZIONE
Foto di famiglia in un esterno: Joan al centro, davanti a lei la piccola Quintana Roo, il marito John è quello dietro a tutti.
Il titolo originale Where I Was From diventa Da dove vengo, e ci sta. Quello che stona, che non va bene, che non serviva, che è solo mossa di marketing, è il sottotitolo: Un’autobiografia.
Sottotitolo che in originale non esiste.
E non esiste perché questo libro non è affatto un’autobiografia. Ma è proprio quello che recita il titolo: una ricerca, o inchiesta, un ragionamento, un’elaborazione sul luogo di provenienza della Didion, la California, sull’essenza di quella terra, sull’eredità che comporta.
Ora, anche se è vero che nessuno è più bravo di Joan Didion a intersecare e intrecciare la sua storia personale con la Storia generale, quella del mondo, quella di tutti gli altri, rimane il fatto che queste pagine sono un’autobiografia solo con grosso impiego di fantasia.
Albert Bierstadt: Among the Sierra Nevada. 1868. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.
La prima parte parla dei pionieri, del Donner Party, parla di migranti.
La seconda è dedicata alle città industriali del sud California (a est di Los Angeles), nate dal nulla, prolificate e diventate floride, poi entrate in crisi con la crisi dell’industria aerospaziale e delle commesse militari.
Thomas Kinkade: The Mountains Declare His Glory.
Dopo, si parla di come questo stato considerato il più libero tra tutti quelli della Land of Freedom, considerato lo stato con regole sociali meno rigide che nel resto del paese, più tollerante delle differenze, sia anche quello col maggior numero di ricoveri forzati per malattia mentale, spesso presunta, molto spesso internamenti a tutti gli effetti, e quello dove si esegue l’80% delle sterilizzazioni per patologie riconducibili in qualche modo al disturbo mentale.
Lo stesso stato dove l’edilizia ha avuto un boom con la costruzione di nuovi carceri, costruire nuovi carceri trasformato in oggetto del desiderio per diverse medio-piccole comunità (il sindacato della polizia penitenziaria in California conta 29.000 iscritti: alle elezioni per governatore del 1998 ha finanziato la campagna elettorale con cinque milioni di dollari, due dei quali come contributo al candidato vincitore, Grey Davis).
Lakewood, California.
Alla fine, la quarta parte, che è la più breve, compare qualche ricordo: della madre, del padre, qualche flash del passato, pur consapevoli che
non esiste davvero un modo per fare i conti con tutto ciò che perdiamo.
Questo libro è stato pubblicato nel 2003. La figlia e il marito di Joan Didion erano ancora vivi: ma alla fine di quell’anno, Quintana Roo entrò in coma (dal quale uscì settimane dopo) e la sera del 30 dicembre John Gregory Dunne morì d’infarto.
La madre di Joan morì il 15 maggio del 2001, due settimane prima di compiere 91 anni. Il pomeriggio del giorno prima madre e figlia residente a New York s’erano parlate per telefono e l’anziana aveva riattaccato la telefonata lasciando una frase a metà e senza saluti e commiati di alcun tipo come sua abitudine, educazione, tradizione. Neppure un semplice ciao: Era la sua soluzione per i momenti in cui l’emozione rischiava di venire a galla.
Foto di famiglia in un esterno: Joan al centro, davanti a lei la piccola Quintana Roo, il marito John è quello dietro a tutti.
Il titolo originale Where I Was From diventa Da dove vengo, e ci sta. Quello che stona, che non va bene, che non serviva, che è solo mossa di marketing, è il sottotitolo: Un’autobiografia.
Sottotitolo che in originale non esiste.
E non esiste perché questo libro non è affatto un’autobiografia. Ma è proprio quello che recita il titolo: una ricerca, o inchiesta, un ragionamento, un’elaborazione sul luogo di provenienza della Didion, la California, sull’essenza di quella terra, sull’eredità che comporta.
Ora, anche se è vero che nessuno è più bravo di Joan Didion a intersecare e intrecciare la sua storia personale con la Storia generale, quella del mondo, quella di tutti gli altri, rimane il fatto che queste pagine sono un’autobiografia solo con grosso impiego di fantasia.
Albert Bierstadt: Among the Sierra Nevada. 1868. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.
La prima parte parla dei pionieri, del Donner Party, parla di migranti.
La seconda è dedicata alle città industriali del sud California (a est di Los Angeles), nate dal nulla, prolificate e diventate floride, poi entrate in crisi con la crisi dell’industria aerospaziale e delle commesse militari.
Thomas Kinkade: The Mountains Declare His Glory.
Dopo, si parla di come questo stato considerato il più libero tra tutti quelli della Land of Freedom, considerato lo stato con regole sociali meno rigide che nel resto del paese, più tollerante delle differenze, sia anche quello col maggior numero di ricoveri forzati per malattia mentale, spesso presunta, molto spesso internamenti a tutti gli effetti, e quello dove si esegue l’80% delle sterilizzazioni per patologie riconducibili in qualche modo al disturbo mentale.
Lo stesso stato dove l’edilizia ha avuto un boom con la costruzione di nuovi carceri, costruire nuovi carceri trasformato in oggetto del desiderio per diverse medio-piccole comunità (il sindacato della polizia penitenziaria in California conta 29.000 iscritti: alle elezioni per governatore del 1998 ha finanziato la campagna elettorale con cinque milioni di dollari, due dei quali come contributo al candidato vincitore, Grey Davis).
Lakewood, California.
Alla fine, la quarta parte, che è la più breve, compare qualche ricordo: della madre, del padre, qualche flash del passato, pur consapevoli che
non esiste davvero un modo per fare i conti con tutto ciò che perdiamo.
Questo libro è stato pubblicato nel 2003. La figlia e il marito di Joan Didion erano ancora vivi: ma alla fine di quell’anno, Quintana Roo entrò in coma (dal quale uscì settimane dopo) e la sera del 30 dicembre John Gregory Dunne morì d’infarto.
La madre di Joan morì il 15 maggio del 2001, due settimane prima di compiere 91 anni. Il pomeriggio del giorno prima madre e figlia residente a New York s’erano parlate per telefono e l’anziana aveva riattaccato la telefonata lasciando una frase a metà e senza saluti e commiati di alcun tipo come sua abitudine, educazione, tradizione. Neppure un semplice ciao: Era la sua soluzione per i momenti in cui l’emozione rischiava di venire a galla.
January 9, 2012
I was raised in California, still live here, and have read Didion all my life. I was thinking of her words on the Santa Ana winds when I finished this book, while a firebug in Los Angeles took advantage of the hot winter weather to set cars on fire across the Westside. Ain't no crazy like a California crazy, I thought; but Joan says it better.
We can divide Didion's work into phases: investigative, fictional, and her late work, mostly memoir. I reject the idea that her earlier stuff is somehow stronger: here and in The Year Of Magical Thinking her prose is contemplative and introspective, but also muscular, the way ballet can be.
I love Joan Didion. I love her way of writing toward her meaning, and I'm thrilled when she gets there, because her words (and her years) have taken her to a view no one else can describe. In this work, she begins to bind together what it means to live in California: without agenda, standing clear of all attachments her life has offered. Those attachments are many, but she refuses to inhabit them.
There's grace in Didion's work: the grace of clarity and distance. It's been decades, and still no one does this better.
We can divide Didion's work into phases: investigative, fictional, and her late work, mostly memoir. I reject the idea that her earlier stuff is somehow stronger: here and in The Year Of Magical Thinking her prose is contemplative and introspective, but also muscular, the way ballet can be.
I love Joan Didion. I love her way of writing toward her meaning, and I'm thrilled when she gets there, because her words (and her years) have taken her to a view no one else can describe. In this work, she begins to bind together what it means to live in California: without agenda, standing clear of all attachments her life has offered. Those attachments are many, but she refuses to inhabit them.
There's grace in Didion's work: the grace of clarity and distance. It's been decades, and still no one does this better.
September 25, 2012
So, so good. Family memoir, social history, contemporary reportage and literary criticism (of Frank Norris, Jack London, and Joan Didion) in perfect proportions, synthesized in her sad and piquant prose, her "astringent lyricism." A patient autopsy of the myths of the American West, of Progress. I want to shelve this with the Bridge novels and Son of the Morning Star; Didion and Connell children of the Plains and the Far West, with their doubts and dry wits, sly siblings winking to each other across the mid-century WASP dinner table. (The grandparents settled this west for what reason, at what cost, to establish what kind of culture?) And when she's funny she makes me smile all day:
Of her nonfiction, this is my second-favorite, just behind The White Album.
A Thomas Kinkade painting was typically rendered in slightly surreal pastels. It typically featured a cottage or a house of such insistent coziness as to seem actually sinister, suggestive of a trap designed to attract Hansel and Gretel. Every window was lit, to lurid effect, as if the interior of the structure might be on fire.
Of her nonfiction, this is my second-favorite, just behind The White Album.
September 5, 2025
This exhibits a great deal of Didion's highly precise prose, as well as her aggravating tendency to try and find meaning for things -- in this case, the 'meaning' of California -- that really don't admit to any universal definition. These two sides of her writing don't mesh very well; groping about for an overarching theme is painfully clumsy when set against sentences like this one:
That's the part that's written clearly and is a pleasure to read.
I'm trying to summarize the remainder of the book and find that I cannot. Through a mixture of luck, connections and (let us not forget) hard work, a few families became huge landowners in the 1800s.
Other than their numbers, we learn almost nothing of these newcomers (including yours truly, having arrived a few years before this book was published.) I struggle because there's nothing particularly Californian about newcomers; since little Joanie was born, the earth's population has doubled, and doubled again. And sticking my head into the frame once again, I'll point out that most of the state, nearly all of it, is significantly devoid of human settlement. While it is difficult to find peace and solitude in Los Angeles County in 2025, you can, from virtually any point in the state, drive for two hours or less and find yourself in a place that doesn't look too much different from what the ranch families of the 1800's saw.
Not her best book, though the good parts are well worth reading.
Many people would later ask whether it had served the common weal to transform the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys from a seasonal shallow sea to a protected hothouse requiring the annual application on each square mile of 3.87 tons of chemical pesticides, but not too many people asked this before the dams; those who did ask, for whatever reason, were categorized as "environmentalists," a word loosely used in this part of California to describe any perceived threat to the life of the absolute personal freedom its citizens believe they lead.Didion's family reached the West Coast a few years ahead of the 1849 Gold Rush, and although they did not live in exceptional circumstances, the state was so lightly settled that her ancesters rubbed elbows with a large number of people who eventually played large roles in the state's history.
That's the part that's written clearly and is a pleasure to read.
Once when I was twelve or thirteen I asked my mother to what "class" we belonged.(Her mother, we eventually learn, was politically somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun.)
"It's not a word we use," she said. "It's not the way we think."
I'm trying to summarize the remainder of the book and find that I cannot. Through a mixture of luck, connections and (let us not forget) hard work, a few families became huge landowners in the 1800s.
Californians whose family ties to the state predate World War Two have an equivocal and often uneasy relationship to the postwar expansion. Joan Irvine Smith, whose family's eighty-eight thousand acre ranch (35,600 hectares) in Orange County was developed in the 1960's, later created the Irvine Museum, dedicated to the California impressionist paintings she had begun collecting in 1991...Virtually anyone dining at the California Club, most particularly not excluding Joan Irvine, has had a direct or indirect investment in the development of California, which is to say in the obliteration of the undeveloped California on display at the Irvine Museum.That seems to be the gist of it. Newcomers have made California richer. Newcomers have spoiled what was great about the state.
Other than their numbers, we learn almost nothing of these newcomers (including yours truly, having arrived a few years before this book was published.) I struggle because there's nothing particularly Californian about newcomers; since little Joanie was born, the earth's population has doubled, and doubled again. And sticking my head into the frame once again, I'll point out that most of the state, nearly all of it, is significantly devoid of human settlement. While it is difficult to find peace and solitude in Los Angeles County in 2025, you can, from virtually any point in the state, drive for two hours or less and find yourself in a place that doesn't look too much different from what the ranch families of the 1800's saw.
Not her best book, though the good parts are well worth reading.
August 23, 2007
Well, I only got half way through this one. The last chapter I landed on, about the Spur Posse and the stark reality of a pre-designed faux ownership class called Lakewood, seems to be the best chapter in the book. It was a struggle to get there.
I feel odd reviewing a book I only read half of, but take a jab at this if you need to. Correct me if I am wrong. Tell me Joan Didion didn't write a whole book about the underbelly of the California dream and leave out the injustices done to people of color. Tell me it ain't so. Because, as far as I can see, Joan, who is a CA native, wrote this "expose" on the great golden state, and seems to feign shock that the westward expansion was less than pleasant, that the water wars and the railway building did not benefit the masses in conception or manifestation. And mostly from the viewpoint of the privelaged.
Her book starts with a twisting and turning history of the Sacramento River, dives loosely into the trek from east to west, the railways, etc, etc. We have heard this story. Joan is correct in pointing out that this is usually a glamorized, romantic tale of rugged individualism. She is also correct in pointing out that CA is one of the more dependant states on federal funding in the nation, and has been from the start. She delivers this as if this contrast were some massive epiphany, as if she truly discovered this novel idea. Strcuk gold, if you will.
Some how, Didion misses the bulk of CA history. All her stories (or at least half of them) are told from the trite viewpoint of wealthy white men and women. Property owners. Barons. She misses the true injustices that have built CA into the amazing place it is today. I am not asking her to write the story of the Native American, I am not asking her to conjure images of every Chinese man's sweat and blood over the iron tracks they lay, or to pay book length homage to Hispanic families who are the backbone of the agricultural industry in CA- but a nod, a wave from your new Manhattan pedestal Joan! Something. I knew the minute she started this historical account without a mention of the people and land that came before the white "settlers" that we were in for a one way perspective ride.
Don't trash CA unless you trash it right. Otherwise, you won't see the people who overcame the struggles. That's why CA rocks it.
I feel odd reviewing a book I only read half of, but take a jab at this if you need to. Correct me if I am wrong. Tell me Joan Didion didn't write a whole book about the underbelly of the California dream and leave out the injustices done to people of color. Tell me it ain't so. Because, as far as I can see, Joan, who is a CA native, wrote this "expose" on the great golden state, and seems to feign shock that the westward expansion was less than pleasant, that the water wars and the railway building did not benefit the masses in conception or manifestation. And mostly from the viewpoint of the privelaged.
Her book starts with a twisting and turning history of the Sacramento River, dives loosely into the trek from east to west, the railways, etc, etc. We have heard this story. Joan is correct in pointing out that this is usually a glamorized, romantic tale of rugged individualism. She is also correct in pointing out that CA is one of the more dependant states on federal funding in the nation, and has been from the start. She delivers this as if this contrast were some massive epiphany, as if she truly discovered this novel idea. Strcuk gold, if you will.
Some how, Didion misses the bulk of CA history. All her stories (or at least half of them) are told from the trite viewpoint of wealthy white men and women. Property owners. Barons. She misses the true injustices that have built CA into the amazing place it is today. I am not asking her to write the story of the Native American, I am not asking her to conjure images of every Chinese man's sweat and blood over the iron tracks they lay, or to pay book length homage to Hispanic families who are the backbone of the agricultural industry in CA- but a nod, a wave from your new Manhattan pedestal Joan! Something. I knew the minute she started this historical account without a mention of the people and land that came before the white "settlers" that we were in for a one way perspective ride.
Don't trash CA unless you trash it right. Otherwise, you won't see the people who overcame the struggles. That's why CA rocks it.
January 7, 2016
“Discussion of how California has 'changed,' then, tends locally to define the more ideal California as that which existed at whatever past point the speaker first saw it: Gilroy as it was in the 1960s and Gilroy as it was fifteen years ago and Gilroy as it was when my father and I ate short ribs at the Milias Hotel are three pictures with virtually no overlap, a hologram that dematerializes as I drive through it.”
― Joan Didion, Where I Was From
“A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image."
― Joan Didion, The White Album
"California belongs to Joan Didion."
― Michiko Kakutani
Probably 3.5★. Not going to review it much tonight. I liked it in parts, loved it in parts, felt let down by parts, but graded against her other greats (The Year of Magical Thinking, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album), it just doesn't quite hold up. Feels a bit cobbled together, but I'm probably just being picky and petty.
In a 4-part book Didion explores the history and narrative of California, and like she is want to do, she kinda clears the table of myths, fables, and stories that people have constructed around place/time. She loves California, but recognizes in that great big state a bunch of contradictions and flaws that seem to be varnished over every couple of years. She loves California but wants it to be loved WITH the flaws, not with the bullshit. This involves a bit of journalistic deconstruction, revisionism, playful teasing, family history, re-reading of her own past writings, thoughts about death and family, property and family, and always, always California (especially Sacramento).
Anyway, mediocre, messy, meditative Didion is still pretty damn fantastic.
― Joan Didion, Where I Was From
“A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image."
― Joan Didion, The White Album
"California belongs to Joan Didion."
― Michiko Kakutani
Probably 3.5★. Not going to review it much tonight. I liked it in parts, loved it in parts, felt let down by parts, but graded against her other greats (The Year of Magical Thinking, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album), it just doesn't quite hold up. Feels a bit cobbled together, but I'm probably just being picky and petty.
In a 4-part book Didion explores the history and narrative of California, and like she is want to do, she kinda clears the table of myths, fables, and stories that people have constructed around place/time. She loves California, but recognizes in that great big state a bunch of contradictions and flaws that seem to be varnished over every couple of years. She loves California but wants it to be loved WITH the flaws, not with the bullshit. This involves a bit of journalistic deconstruction, revisionism, playful teasing, family history, re-reading of her own past writings, thoughts about death and family, property and family, and always, always California (especially Sacramento).
Anyway, mediocre, messy, meditative Didion is still pretty damn fantastic.
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November 4, 2022Llevaba tiempo queriendo leer a esta autora y, como intuía que me iba a gustar, no me preocupé en investigar demasiado su obra y me lancé a leer el primero de sus libros que cayó en mis manos. La sorpresa ha sido rotunda. Y, desde luego, más que positiva.
Porque este «De dónde soy» del título no presenta una historia autobiográfica ni una novela familiar sino un rotundo ensayo sobre la historia del estado de California. No hablo de un ensayo novelado, ni de una historia desde la perspectiva de la autora: hablo de un ensayo profundo, bien documentado y lleno de datos. Es un texto muy buen construido y con una gran capacidad analítica que hará las delicias de cualquier enamorado de la geografía física y humana, la historia, la economía, la sociología, la etnografía… Un rotundo manual para saber todo lo que hay que saber sobre California, que no se ahorra detalles y que, además, está explicado con buen gusto y oficio.
Claro que hay alguna parte que se hace más densa que otras. Claro que cuando lo lees te gustaría saber más de la historia familiar de la autora (que apenas se intuye entre los acontecimientos históricos). Pero todo eso no importa cuando te cuentan de una forma tan visual y bien argumentada cómo ese gigantesco territorio «virgen» pasa a ser una tierra de ranchos, un depósito de energías combustibles, una enorme base aeroespacial y, al final, un gran negocio neoliberal que especula con el suelo en forma de bienes inmobiliarios.
He aprendido una barbaridad. Y me ha encantado que la historia de California me la cuente una californiana. Ahora, por supuesto, quiero leer mucho más de Joan Didion.
Porque este «De dónde soy» del título no presenta una historia autobiográfica ni una novela familiar sino un rotundo ensayo sobre la historia del estado de California. No hablo de un ensayo novelado, ni de una historia desde la perspectiva de la autora: hablo de un ensayo profundo, bien documentado y lleno de datos. Es un texto muy buen construido y con una gran capacidad analítica que hará las delicias de cualquier enamorado de la geografía física y humana, la historia, la economía, la sociología, la etnografía… Un rotundo manual para saber todo lo que hay que saber sobre California, que no se ahorra detalles y que, además, está explicado con buen gusto y oficio.
Claro que hay alguna parte que se hace más densa que otras. Claro que cuando lo lees te gustaría saber más de la historia familiar de la autora (que apenas se intuye entre los acontecimientos históricos). Pero todo eso no importa cuando te cuentan de una forma tan visual y bien argumentada cómo ese gigantesco territorio «virgen» pasa a ser una tierra de ranchos, un depósito de energías combustibles, una enorme base aeroespacial y, al final, un gran negocio neoliberal que especula con el suelo en forma de bienes inmobiliarios.
He aprendido una barbaridad. Y me ha encantado que la historia de California me la cuente una californiana. Ahora, por supuesto, quiero leer mucho más de Joan Didion.
July 16, 2013
In a way, everything Didion wrote led to this book. I think it's one of her best and I sort of consider it the end of the trail, even though her biggest publishing success ("The Year of Magical Thinking") was just around the corner. This is Didion's elegiac farewell to California, going back over her life and work and the pioneer myths onto which she had projected so much of her core narrative sensibilities. There's a real scope to it -- collecting a New Yorker piece about the teen sex posse in Lakewood, Calif., and some other California-related pieces for the NYRB -- and then some very good personal work near the end, on the death of her mother, which is in a way more powerful than the grief story told in "Magical Thinking." "The White Album" is my favorite Didion book, but this one is a close second.
May 2, 2025
Estaba buscando un libro sobre la California setentera, o mejor, sobre cierto espíritu estadounidense ahora perdido, y me hablaron de la Didion ensayista, así que me encontré con esta antología completísima —que maridé además con el documental Joan Didion: the center will not hold—, en la que repasa sus textos fundamentales desde mediados de los sesenta a principios de los noventa.
Se estructura en cinco bloques que se correponden con cinco de sus libros de artículos publicados en revistas como Life o Esquire. En el primero, Arrastrase hacia Belén, los textos son muy luminosos e irónicos: el último John Wayne, los jóvenes desencantados de San Francisco en los inicios del hippismo, el significado de California, el viento de Los Ángeles y la experiencia de ser joven en Nueva York. En El álbum blanco, una Didion pudiente, habitante de la ilógica forma de vivir de Hollywood, lo mismo da cenas para gente como Janis Joplin entre retratos perfectos de Georgia O'Keeffe, o se interesa por Los Doors y las películas de moteros, o trata de descubrir la alquimia de los problemas sociales tras los asesinatos de la familia Polanski. En Después de Henry, los ensayos recogidos reflejan la vida neoyorquina y los acontecimientos posteriores a la muerte de su editor, destacando a mi juicio la profundidad del ensayo sobre la criminalidad en el Manhattan de los ochenta. En los últimos dos libros, Salvador y Miami hay una evolución clara de la crítica social a la crítica política, como si estuviese ya cansada de temas "menores".
Han pasado cincuenta años y la gran mayoría de artículos resultan intemporales, aunque a veces abruma con un exceso de nombres de la época.
Me gusta cómo combina la fragilidad de sus experiencias personales con la dureza de los temas tratados. Es muy rigurosa. Pincelada fina, mil matices y cero sentimentalismo, así que en genaral, una experiencia fantástica. Ansío ponerme con la Didion novelista.
Se estructura en cinco bloques que se correponden con cinco de sus libros de artículos publicados en revistas como Life o Esquire. En el primero, Arrastrase hacia Belén, los textos son muy luminosos e irónicos: el último John Wayne, los jóvenes desencantados de San Francisco en los inicios del hippismo, el significado de California, el viento de Los Ángeles y la experiencia de ser joven en Nueva York. En El álbum blanco, una Didion pudiente, habitante de la ilógica forma de vivir de Hollywood, lo mismo da cenas para gente como Janis Joplin entre retratos perfectos de Georgia O'Keeffe, o se interesa por Los Doors y las películas de moteros, o trata de descubrir la alquimia de los problemas sociales tras los asesinatos de la familia Polanski. En Después de Henry, los ensayos recogidos reflejan la vida neoyorquina y los acontecimientos posteriores a la muerte de su editor, destacando a mi juicio la profundidad del ensayo sobre la criminalidad en el Manhattan de los ochenta. En los últimos dos libros, Salvador y Miami hay una evolución clara de la crítica social a la crítica política, como si estuviese ya cansada de temas "menores".
Han pasado cincuenta años y la gran mayoría de artículos resultan intemporales, aunque a veces abruma con un exceso de nombres de la época.
Me gusta cómo combina la fragilidad de sus experiencias personales con la dureza de los temas tratados. Es muy rigurosa. Pincelada fina, mil matices y cero sentimentalismo, así que en genaral, una experiencia fantástica. Ansío ponerme con la Didion novelista.
January 1, 2018
Joan Didion discusses her family and their migration to California. She separates fact from fiction in the stories told, not only about her own family, but also about her native California. Exploring bits and pieces from the 19th century to 21st, readers are treated to well-written essays showing the spirit of true Californians.My favorite essays, of course, were those exploring her own family or which included information on the family of her subjects. Thomas Kincade was the starting point of one of her essays. This one appealed to me because our family usually puts together a puzzle at Christmas, and it is often one based on a Thomas Kincade print. This was my introduction to Didion, but I hope to explore some of her other writings as time permits.
Read
June 23, 2019Con Joan Didion no soy objetiva. Es una de mis escritoras favoritas. Me gusta tanto en novela como en ensayo, aunque reconozco que es con este último donde me gana.
Los que sueñan el sueño dorado es una recopilación de artículos con una temática de los más variada: reflexiones personales, crónicas de asesinatos, una canción de amor a John Wayne, un homenaje a Georgia O'keefe, incluso habla del período presidencial de Ronald Reagan. Ha sido muy bonito reencontrarme con la Joan íntima de El año del pensamiento mágico y a su vez, descubrir a la escritora divertida, mordaz e incisiva, incluso a la reivindicativa en esta recopilación.
Ella hace que escribir parezca fácil. Tiene una manera de contar tan cercana que atrapa; te hace partícipe del relato hasta el punto de creer que Joan Didion te habla a ti.
Y en mitad de toda esa conversación íntima y personal, no puedo evitar recordar a esas otras escritoras que me hacen sentir en casa: Olivia Laing y su Ciudad solitaria , Maggie Nelson y sus Argonautas, Patti Smith con M Train o mi querida Margaret Atwood en La maldición de Eva. Todas ellas mujeres escritoras, con una voz única, diversa y carismática.
Tras leer este sueño dorado, tampoco me olvido de Sara Smythe, uno de los personajes literarios que más me han marcado este año lector.
Vidas distintas entrelazadas por un mismo hilo conductor: las palabras y la escritura como catalizador para contar historias, ya sea la propia o la ajena. Y sí, esta vez, el relato se cuenta en voz alta.
Qué suerte leerlas y qué bonito ha sido encontrarlas.
Los que sueñan el sueño dorado es una recopilación de artículos con una temática de los más variada: reflexiones personales, crónicas de asesinatos, una canción de amor a John Wayne, un homenaje a Georgia O'keefe, incluso habla del período presidencial de Ronald Reagan. Ha sido muy bonito reencontrarme con la Joan íntima de El año del pensamiento mágico y a su vez, descubrir a la escritora divertida, mordaz e incisiva, incluso a la reivindicativa en esta recopilación.
Ella hace que escribir parezca fácil. Tiene una manera de contar tan cercana que atrapa; te hace partícipe del relato hasta el punto de creer que Joan Didion te habla a ti.
Y en mitad de toda esa conversación íntima y personal, no puedo evitar recordar a esas otras escritoras que me hacen sentir en casa: Olivia Laing y su Ciudad solitaria , Maggie Nelson y sus Argonautas, Patti Smith con M Train o mi querida Margaret Atwood en La maldición de Eva. Todas ellas mujeres escritoras, con una voz única, diversa y carismática.
Tras leer este sueño dorado, tampoco me olvido de Sara Smythe, uno de los personajes literarios que más me han marcado este año lector.
Vidas distintas entrelazadas por un mismo hilo conductor: las palabras y la escritura como catalizador para contar historias, ya sea la propia o la ajena. Y sí, esta vez, el relato se cuenta en voz alta.
Qué suerte leerlas y qué bonito ha sido encontrarlas.
May 23, 2022
2.5
instead of a memoir, this is more of a historical account of didion’s heritage and ancestry in california. i can imagine this would be interesting to some, particularly native californians who would enjoy learning about the history of their home state, but unfortunately it wasn’t what i was looking for, nor what i was expecting due to this book being labelled as joan didion’s ‘first ever memoir’, which it isn’t. if you’re looking for a memoir by joan didion, i’d highly recommend the year of magical thinking. but there’s no denying that didion is a fantastic writer, and i enjoyed the last 50 or so pages the most.
instead of a memoir, this is more of a historical account of didion’s heritage and ancestry in california. i can imagine this would be interesting to some, particularly native californians who would enjoy learning about the history of their home state, but unfortunately it wasn’t what i was looking for, nor what i was expecting due to this book being labelled as joan didion’s ‘first ever memoir’, which it isn’t. if you’re looking for a memoir by joan didion, i’d highly recommend the year of magical thinking. but there’s no denying that didion is a fantastic writer, and i enjoyed the last 50 or so pages the most.
April 5, 2019
"Questo libro è una ricerca sui miei equivoci circa il luogo e il modo in cui sono cresciuta, equivoci che riguardano l'America così come la California, fraintendimenti e malintesi a tal punto insiti nella persona che sono diventata che ancora oggi mi riesce di affrontarli solo per vie indirette."
Non esattamente una biografia, dunque. Un viaggio, piuttosto.
Un'indagine antropologica, sociale e anche familiare. La storia dei pionieri che per primi abitarono la valle dell'Eden, nutrendola con le loro speranze e le loro illusioni; il cammino eroico verso la Sierra Nevada, prima che inesorabile scenda la neve; la progressiva trasformazione dello spirito dell'Ovest e "l'alterazione dell'immaginario" entro cui è affondato il sogno californiano... tutto questo si intreccia con la vita, il sentimento e la storia personale di Joan, dei suoi antenati e dei suoi genitori.
Raccontata come sempre con la sua voce dal timbro unico e inconfondibile.
Il suo realismo, la sua lucidità, la sua stoica amarezza.
Perché "non esiste davvero un modo per fare i conti con tutto ciò che perdiamo".
Non esattamente una biografia, dunque. Un viaggio, piuttosto.
Un'indagine antropologica, sociale e anche familiare. La storia dei pionieri che per primi abitarono la valle dell'Eden, nutrendola con le loro speranze e le loro illusioni; il cammino eroico verso la Sierra Nevada, prima che inesorabile scenda la neve; la progressiva trasformazione dello spirito dell'Ovest e "l'alterazione dell'immaginario" entro cui è affondato il sogno californiano... tutto questo si intreccia con la vita, il sentimento e la storia personale di Joan, dei suoi antenati e dei suoi genitori.
Raccontata come sempre con la sua voce dal timbro unico e inconfondibile.
Il suo realismo, la sua lucidità, la sua stoica amarezza.
Perché "non esiste davvero un modo per fare i conti con tutto ciò che perdiamo".
June 18, 2024
"𝘔𝘶𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘢 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘱𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘪𝘵𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧 𝘢𝘴 𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘢𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘳, 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘢𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘺: 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘥𝘸𝘰𝘰𝘥𝘴, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘰𝘫𝘢𝘷𝘦 (𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘪𝘥𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦 𝘸𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩), 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘢𝘵 𝘉𝘪𝘨 𝘚𝘶𝘳, 𝘔𝘰𝘯𝘰 𝘓𝘢𝘬𝘦, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘷𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘪𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘢.., 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩, 𝘒𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘯 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘳 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘱𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘶𝘵, "𝘰𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘊𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝘢𝘯 𝘰𝘣𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘭 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴: 𝘢 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘰𝘪𝘤 𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘴."
I read this years ago when I did not appreciate Didion, when I did not even appreciate California, where I'm from. For the longest time, I did not like where I was from. I went north for school, San Francisco. Then I went south, sometimes, for friends, the frat parties in Santa Barbara and a boy down in San Diego. When I think back, look back, a lot of heart overwhelms me. The golden shimmers of Isla Vista, the sunsets in LA. All of it overwhelms me.
Years after, and even years after for Didion to compile this book, it's tough to piece together what California really is. Didion looks at her own history, the history of California, and half of it is a bit dull, until she gets to how she formed Run River and, finally, about her mother and the death of her mother.
"𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘧𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘥 𝘐 𝘬𝘦𝘱𝘵 𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨. 𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘮𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘥 𝘐 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘯𝘰𝘵."
I wish she stayed here, more, in the last few pages of the book because it's then you really get the sense of what California is for her. What she has carried with her, how she has created legacy.
It is no fault by Didion, but California is just an impossible thing to capture. Past its mountains and through its valleys. It's beaches and it's people. God, the people. The food. The single season.
I'm so proud to say I'm from California because it contains multitudes no one will understand unless you've driven down the gnarled streets of Mulholland Drive or spent a 4/20 weekend in Isla Vista or have cried at the top of Land's End, on a clear day, seeing the Golden Gate Bridge imagining the future as a stretched possibility, people coming people going, into your life.
I read this years ago when I did not appreciate Didion, when I did not even appreciate California, where I'm from. For the longest time, I did not like where I was from. I went north for school, San Francisco. Then I went south, sometimes, for friends, the frat parties in Santa Barbara and a boy down in San Diego. When I think back, look back, a lot of heart overwhelms me. The golden shimmers of Isla Vista, the sunsets in LA. All of it overwhelms me.
Years after, and even years after for Didion to compile this book, it's tough to piece together what California really is. Didion looks at her own history, the history of California, and half of it is a bit dull, until she gets to how she formed Run River and, finally, about her mother and the death of her mother.
"𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘧𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘥 𝘐 𝘬𝘦𝘱𝘵 𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨. 𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘮𝘺 𝘮𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘥 𝘐 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘯𝘰𝘵."
I wish she stayed here, more, in the last few pages of the book because it's then you really get the sense of what California is for her. What she has carried with her, how she has created legacy.
It is no fault by Didion, but California is just an impossible thing to capture. Past its mountains and through its valleys. It's beaches and it's people. God, the people. The food. The single season.
I'm so proud to say I'm from California because it contains multitudes no one will understand unless you've driven down the gnarled streets of Mulholland Drive or spent a 4/20 weekend in Isla Vista or have cried at the top of Land's End, on a clear day, seeing the Golden Gate Bridge imagining the future as a stretched possibility, people coming people going, into your life.
October 28, 2012
Me ha gustado mucho, sobre todo los textos escritos en los 60 y 70, me parecen mucho más atrevidos que los últimos de la selección. Pero su voz es alucinante. Estoy deseando leer "El año del pensamiento mágico". Sí, sí. Muy fan.
September 22, 2020
Mollezze di un'educazione molle
Titolo disonesto dell'editore italiano, Joan Didion non parla della sua vita familiare: riflette sul suo paese d'origine, la California, con la severità che qualche volta si riserva a quello che ci è caro. Il suo libro d'esordio, Run River, trattava in parte lo stesso argomento in forma di romanzo e si concludeva negli anni sessanta.
I pensieri dell'autrice si sviluppano in modo piacevolmente vario, perchè non ha una tesi da imporre. Comincia smontando un discorso che aveva preparato per la scuola quando era ragazzina e parlava della California come della terra dell'oro raggiunta dagli eroici pionieri, gli antenati gloriosi dell'epopea del West. Crescendo, si era documentata e aveva realizzato che si trattava di gente che a un certo punto aveva interrotto la vita precedente e si era buttata in un'avventura incerta, che qualche volta aveva portato a una vita migliore; molte altre, aveva pagato un prezzo altissimo, lasciando per la via cassettoni di palissandro, argenteria, corpi seppelliti alla meglio.
I discendenti dei pionieri credono che tutto sia loro dovuto, in memoria degli antichi colonizzatori :“americani del vecchio ceppo” per dirla con Jack London. Idea repubblicana che supporta il triste rifiuto della gente di origine asiatica, neri, italiani, messicani e altri estranei meno bianchi di loro.
Un altro argomento sul quale Joan Didion infierisce è il declino dei valori manifestato in una comunità del comparto aerospaziale, a sua volta in fase di smantellamento. Qui le famiglie di un gruppo di tangheri di 16-18 anni , sedicenti Spur Posse, difendono i loro bravi ragazzi dalle accuse di stupro, poiché la scuola con le lezioni di educazione sessuale mette loro in testa delle idee: le famiglie dei bulli dicono sempre cose imbarazzanti. Pare che la comunità ritenesse la cittadina un posto ottimale, dato il numero di attività ricreative disponibili, tutte a base di palla: baseball, basket, football, tutti avevano la loro palla. Pare infatti che nelle High Schools americane i meriti sportivi diano crediti spendibili per la promozione: in questo caso però “mens sana in corpore sano” non sembra funzionare.
Joan Didion mi fa sorridere col discorso della decadenza della gioventù dovuta alle mollezze di un'educazione molle; lo dicevano anche gli autori latini a proposito del passaggio dalla Repubblica all'Impero, e probabilmente avevano anche ragione.
Titolo disonesto dell'editore italiano, Joan Didion non parla della sua vita familiare: riflette sul suo paese d'origine, la California, con la severità che qualche volta si riserva a quello che ci è caro. Il suo libro d'esordio, Run River, trattava in parte lo stesso argomento in forma di romanzo e si concludeva negli anni sessanta.
I pensieri dell'autrice si sviluppano in modo piacevolmente vario, perchè non ha una tesi da imporre. Comincia smontando un discorso che aveva preparato per la scuola quando era ragazzina e parlava della California come della terra dell'oro raggiunta dagli eroici pionieri, gli antenati gloriosi dell'epopea del West. Crescendo, si era documentata e aveva realizzato che si trattava di gente che a un certo punto aveva interrotto la vita precedente e si era buttata in un'avventura incerta, che qualche volta aveva portato a una vita migliore; molte altre, aveva pagato un prezzo altissimo, lasciando per la via cassettoni di palissandro, argenteria, corpi seppelliti alla meglio.
I discendenti dei pionieri credono che tutto sia loro dovuto, in memoria degli antichi colonizzatori :“americani del vecchio ceppo” per dirla con Jack London. Idea repubblicana che supporta il triste rifiuto della gente di origine asiatica, neri, italiani, messicani e altri estranei meno bianchi di loro.
Un altro argomento sul quale Joan Didion infierisce è il declino dei valori manifestato in una comunità del comparto aerospaziale, a sua volta in fase di smantellamento. Qui le famiglie di un gruppo di tangheri di 16-18 anni , sedicenti Spur Posse, difendono i loro bravi ragazzi dalle accuse di stupro, poiché la scuola con le lezioni di educazione sessuale mette loro in testa delle idee: le famiglie dei bulli dicono sempre cose imbarazzanti. Pare che la comunità ritenesse la cittadina un posto ottimale, dato il numero di attività ricreative disponibili, tutte a base di palla: baseball, basket, football, tutti avevano la loro palla. Pare infatti che nelle High Schools americane i meriti sportivi diano crediti spendibili per la promozione: in questo caso però “mens sana in corpore sano” non sembra funzionare.
Joan Didion mi fa sorridere col discorso della decadenza della gioventù dovuta alle mollezze di un'educazione molle; lo dicevano anche gli autori latini a proposito del passaggio dalla Repubblica all'Impero, e probabilmente avevano anche ragione.
April 14, 2010
Joan Didion strikes me as being one of the smartest writers in America, with a firm but quiet authority that makes me trust her absolutely. She is also probably the last social commentator in America who is not shouting with little rivulets of mad-dog spittle flying from the corners of her mouth.
Sometimes the book was truly thought-changing for me in not only how I regard California, but how I regard the whole westward expansion aspect of the USA. I live in Fort Wayne, IN – once the hot center of the military-trading frontier and characterized by all of the usual boondoggles, chicanery, and rapaciousness. To see this carried on to the Golden Gate was a bit depressing – in fact, by the time we had “expanded” to California, the federal apparatus had become very sophisticated and prevalent in a way that dwarfs the knee-britches and coonskin cap crudities of Indiana settlement. Damn the railroads. And aero-space. And, er, and thank God for them too, I guess. Whence goeth California, so goeth the country?
Ah, but I digress. One of my favorite moments in this book was when one of my favorite military historians, Victor Davis Hansen, a Californian like Didion, and like Didion the product of wealthy pioneer ranch-owning stock, came under Didion’s pitiless gaze. Hansen has long rhapsodized about how he still lives on and to some extent works the ranch, contrasting his rooted-to-the-soil rootedness with the shallow narcissistic lives lead by other Americans. Because of my enormous respect for him, I always took all these things he said as gospel. But Didion calmly and rationally takes Hansen’s supposed pioneering spirit and reduces it to a smoldering pile of historical wishful-thinking. California is and pretty much always has been a heavily subsidized, self-satisfied and self-delusional product of a whole bunch of Federal interference --dam-building and corporate gimmees (first the railroads, then military-avionics, crop subsidies, etc.). The Donner Party had to eat their dead (and not-quite-dead-yets) but once they got to the Golden State, things got a lot easier for many of them. This is a gross simplification of Didion’s calm handling of facts. I was uncomfortable to see Hansen get exposed like this…he rebutted, I presume, somewhere…but Didion did it without getting shrill for even a moment. And her logic, and her facts, seemed dead-on.
I mean to read more of Didion’s work…my only (wildly unfair) complaint about her is that she often writes about stuff I don’t give a tinker’s damn about (California, for instance – although she made me interested finally. But I had to stop reading her book on Miami, so absolutely bogged down and bored I became in the Cuban expat political scene). Sort of like the way the New Yorker’s best writer, Joan Accocela (I spelt that wrong, I know) covers, mostly, dance! But good writing is its own reward. Didion is a master. There is this weird melancholy aspect to her prose that is unique to her – it lends a gravity to what she writes that is missing in that of most other cultural commentators. She’s one of the few famous contemporary writers I would like to know.
Sometimes the book was truly thought-changing for me in not only how I regard California, but how I regard the whole westward expansion aspect of the USA. I live in Fort Wayne, IN – once the hot center of the military-trading frontier and characterized by all of the usual boondoggles, chicanery, and rapaciousness. To see this carried on to the Golden Gate was a bit depressing – in fact, by the time we had “expanded” to California, the federal apparatus had become very sophisticated and prevalent in a way that dwarfs the knee-britches and coonskin cap crudities of Indiana settlement. Damn the railroads. And aero-space. And, er, and thank God for them too, I guess. Whence goeth California, so goeth the country?
Ah, but I digress. One of my favorite moments in this book was when one of my favorite military historians, Victor Davis Hansen, a Californian like Didion, and like Didion the product of wealthy pioneer ranch-owning stock, came under Didion’s pitiless gaze. Hansen has long rhapsodized about how he still lives on and to some extent works the ranch, contrasting his rooted-to-the-soil rootedness with the shallow narcissistic lives lead by other Americans. Because of my enormous respect for him, I always took all these things he said as gospel. But Didion calmly and rationally takes Hansen’s supposed pioneering spirit and reduces it to a smoldering pile of historical wishful-thinking. California is and pretty much always has been a heavily subsidized, self-satisfied and self-delusional product of a whole bunch of Federal interference --dam-building and corporate gimmees (first the railroads, then military-avionics, crop subsidies, etc.). The Donner Party had to eat their dead (and not-quite-dead-yets) but once they got to the Golden State, things got a lot easier for many of them. This is a gross simplification of Didion’s calm handling of facts. I was uncomfortable to see Hansen get exposed like this…he rebutted, I presume, somewhere…but Didion did it without getting shrill for even a moment. And her logic, and her facts, seemed dead-on.
I mean to read more of Didion’s work…my only (wildly unfair) complaint about her is that she often writes about stuff I don’t give a tinker’s damn about (California, for instance – although she made me interested finally. But I had to stop reading her book on Miami, so absolutely bogged down and bored I became in the Cuban expat political scene). Sort of like the way the New Yorker’s best writer, Joan Accocela (I spelt that wrong, I know) covers, mostly, dance! But good writing is its own reward. Didion is a master. There is this weird melancholy aspect to her prose that is unique to her – it lends a gravity to what she writes that is missing in that of most other cultural commentators. She’s one of the few famous contemporary writers I would like to know.
July 12, 2025
Joan Didion ha su di me il potere di farmi dire "di suo leggerei anche la lista della spesa". Mi sono interrogata sul perché abbia questo effetto su di me, e al di là dello stile fresco e diretto, quello che mi prende la mente è la capacità di andare al punto della questione, qualunque sia la questione. Se poi la questione è qualcosa come il dolore, la perdita, la nostalgia, capite bene che andare al punto può avere un impatto potente. In questa autobiografia Didion mette sotto la sua lente analitica il paese in cui lei e i suoi avi hanno vissuto, la California, mettendone in luce i valori, le contraddizioni, le assurdità senza edulcorare nulla, ma al contempo senza slegarla mai dal suo affetto incondizionato.
January 12, 2022
Joan Didion's Where I Was From is a reflection on her past life in California that will resonate with anyone who holds on to connections with the past.
The state of California was founded by a rough-and-tumble collections of settlers who fought the Natives and took their land. From the birth of the state, corporations have carved it up and turned it into fields for capitalist harvest. First the Southern Pacific Railroad company then the aerospace industry, each partnered with the federal government's funding of dams and levees to direct water to the desert and to place California as one of the largest corporate agricultural producers in the world. And as each of these companies would leave the state - and leave a path of harm and destruction in their wake - the Californians left behind inevitably feel nostalgia for a California that no longer - and quite frankly never did - exists.
Where I Was From is presumably about California but its meaning will touch even those with no connection to the state. Didion once again writes to remind us that nostalgia can be a tempting method of seeing the world but it clouds our view of the present and rewrites the news of the past. Nostalgia tells us that the reason for societal decline is increased crime rates and social decay when in reality these are but symptoms of a larger capitalist exploitation and failure. The resonance of this book is incredible; read it.
The state of California was founded by a rough-and-tumble collections of settlers who fought the Natives and took their land. From the birth of the state, corporations have carved it up and turned it into fields for capitalist harvest. First the Southern Pacific Railroad company then the aerospace industry, each partnered with the federal government's funding of dams and levees to direct water to the desert and to place California as one of the largest corporate agricultural producers in the world. And as each of these companies would leave the state - and leave a path of harm and destruction in their wake - the Californians left behind inevitably feel nostalgia for a California that no longer - and quite frankly never did - exists.
Where I Was From is presumably about California but its meaning will touch even those with no connection to the state. Didion once again writes to remind us that nostalgia can be a tempting method of seeing the world but it clouds our view of the present and rewrites the news of the past. Nostalgia tells us that the reason for societal decline is increased crime rates and social decay when in reality these are but symptoms of a larger capitalist exploitation and failure. The resonance of this book is incredible; read it.
August 9, 2024
This shape-shifting book isn't quite what it appears to be -- there's the exploration of California pioneer narratives, probing the fictions and delusions at the heart of the state's self-image, reporting the wreckage from its economic collapse in the early 1990s. But as the book progresses, the narrative becomes increasingly personal with Didion discussing her own nostalgic reasons for writing her first novel and its many blind spots, and concluding with a heart-rending section on the death of her parents. She writes, "There is no real way to deal with everything we lose."
Want to read
January 26, 2023it's been too long since i've reread the bible of california written by (arguably) the greatest californian
(i respect her life in new york but she will always be my california prophet <3)
(i respect her life in new york but she will always be my california prophet <3)
October 6, 2011
This was a tough book to get through, often dull, frequently depressing. Didion, a Sacramento-area native, examines the myth of the Calfornia Dream. She provides ample evidence that state residents are self-deluded and that their values frequently contradict (ie: believing we are anti-government mavericks, yet being reliant on the DOD for so many jobs). The book is well-researched and accounts of the media coverage of the "Spur Posse" and the number of prisons and insane asyllums in the state (that the penal system frequently received more funds than public schools!) are shocking and disturbing. Ultimately, this is a sad wake-up call for those who believe Calfornia is somehow immune to the nation's ills or has been "ruined" by "outsiders." The Golden Past is only real in a reminiscier's memory.
September 6, 2024
Didn’t enjoy this one, but maybe I just don’t care about California.
August 29, 2025
i luoghi che compongono il suo paesaggio interiore.
bellissimo viaggio nella vita e nelle origini della scrittrice. Come il luogo di origine ti forma, ti plasma? quanto rimane di esso dentro di te nella tua vita?
“non esiste davvero un modo per fare i conti con tutto ciò che perdiamo”
bellissimo viaggio nella vita e nelle origini della scrittrice. Come il luogo di origine ti forma, ti plasma? quanto rimane di esso dentro di te nella tua vita?
“non esiste davvero un modo per fare i conti con tutto ciò che perdiamo”
March 25, 2023
This was wow. Every Californian should read. How she unravels the confusions of California is just !!!! It was a joy to read something just so personal and relatable and also enlightening. And especially because she left, and then returns, and I will too…and being someone and part of a family unit from everywhere and no where and making (struggling?) California our home…like didions own family and many others…
January 13, 2021
Me aferré a este libro en el final del 2020 como si fuera una biblia y me sostuvo firme. Didion duda de todo, lo observa todo y lo separa en capas delgadas para finalmente exponerlo sin vueltas.
December 2, 2024
3.5 Stars!
PAPERBACK EDITION!
This is another one of those books which tries to examine the dark underbelly of California, except it doesn’t really do that with any depth or conviction. From generations of corrupt speculators, politicians and corporate scum to those weird gatherings they have by the lake where ex and future presidents seem to show up along with other captains of industry to the sinister Spur posse at Lakewood High in the early 90s.
Didion remains conspicuously muted on the rampant racism and police corruption which has plagued so much of the state for generations, which has played out in various violent episodes over the decades – so no analysis of the Watts or Rodney King riots?... confirming that this is really nothing more than a narrow, shallow, white upper middle-class rich girls view of California – which seems closer to the crap that comes out of the TV and film studios there, than the actual lived experience of most people living there.
I did enjoy this though the opening chapters were a bit dull and not very interesting at all, I’d love to have seen a wider and more in depth look at some of the aforementioned areas, but still this was enjoyable enough and I learned some new and interesting things, but those longing for something meatier and more in depth may wish to turn to Mike Davis’s “City of Quartz” or the excellent documentary – “O.J: Made In America” which really digs deeper and explores a lot darker terrain.
March 26, 2023
m'ha tornat loca!!! fet per tots aquells que tenim una relació complicada amb es lloc d'on venim, sa nostra família, nosaltres mateixos
Want to read
July 27, 2025this might be a little birthday treat for myself even though i've never even been to California xx
December 1, 2022
An engaging, grounded exploration of California's history and how it influences the identity of everyone born here. No way that Lady Bird isn't partially inspired by it IMO.
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