And like so many great American wizards, the effect of much of Didion’s writing, from Slouching Towards Bethlehem to the equally fetishized White Album, has the spell-like effect of a particularly impassive astrologer, an evasive Sactown psychic phoning it in. Didion’s writing divines more than it diagnoses. Her auguries retain just enough blurriness at the edges for anyone—well, almost anyone—to see themselves in the fortune told.
