In fact, there is perhaps no description that captures Didion’s work better than to say that it is consummate pick-me writing. Her pitiless, colonially inflected reportage, and the wider misapprehension of Didion’s style as unsentimental (usually dog whistle phrasing for “unfeminine, thank God”) is at the very core of Didion’s cultural popularity and critical approval. When Didion is praised, it’s often in a specific kind of chiaroscuro: she’s not like other women writers.
