Slouching Towards Bethlehem

[Ana]

Hi! This month we're gonna be reading this marvelous collection of prose, essays, womanphernalia, and more. Please join along so that the discussion on what I believe will be potentially controversial subjects can be the richer!

Luv,
Ana

[Libby]

I'm so excited to read this!

[Phoenix]

I only just joined this group but by some miraculous coincidence I had started reading Slouching Towards Bethlehem last week. Looking forward to discussing and digesting with you all. Group digestion.

[Gabriella]

saw Tavi's post on twitter about this group while I was wandering about a book store wondering what book I should embark on next... meant to be??

[Jools]

hey I just joined the other day and already happened to be reading this book, yay! what a crazy random happenstance :)

[Ana]

Confession time:

a) It's the first time I've read a book of essays.
b) I'm only a few pages in, but already thrilling over the cool manner in which Didion laces literature into her journalism:

In some ways it was the conventional clandestine affair in a place like San Bernardino, a place where little is bright or graceful, where it is routine to misplace the future and easy to start looking for it in bed..

[Jaclyn]

Only in part 1 of 3 but what's striking me as interesting now, as I've finished the 3rd essay, is how drastically different the narratives (not stylistically, but content-wise) are, but with the same time period and general region of the U.S.

It's like an anthropological history tour where you are exposed to all these people you would never be exposed to in 1 lifetime as a bystander.

I feel happy that Joan had the opportunity to meet and write about these people. Because with her beautifully written language, it's a wonderful lens at which to see this period of time.

[Jaclyn]

I'll be sharing my favorite excerpts when I'm done reading. n_n

[Ana]

Honesty moment: Perhaps I'm not quite understanding the essays? Or is it normal that I get bored by high-browed literature?

[Ana]

Ok, so the month dedicated to one of Didion's most popular creations is over, but I gave it one last go last night and discovered the first essay that I truly came to like: The one on Comrade Laski. You see, I study in a very left-winged Latin American university in which the Comrade Laski figure is a fucking archetype and at times it can feel like the students compete in who can be the most ideological and left-winged of 'em all. So, this character was very REAL to me, but, real-er still was the narrator's voice telling me how she recognized her own emptiness in the contrast between her lack of purpose and the Comrade's exuberant one. She also implies that the Comrade's purpose is sort of delusional, because she compares this sort of character to the ones that find relief in drugs, alochol, sex, and religion: All of these are on the same moral level for the narrator.

Now, I might agree with her or not on this last bit. I, myself, am religious and left-winged. But the echo of her feeling, the existentialist peril of life in contrast with people that center their lives on something ELSE, something that is not exactly THEM to give it meaning, struck home.

So, points for me. I enjoyed at least one of the essays. Lol.

[Jaclyn]

I'm still stuck in the middle of part 2 of 3, but when I'm complete I'll share my thoughts!

[Jaclyn]

by stuck I mean still reading just fine, just wishing I were at the end so I could make sense of everything in full