Reading the 20th Century discussion
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Slouching Towards Bethlehem
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Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion (1968) - April 2022
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Whenever I hear about the woman's trip, which is often, I think a lot about nothin'-says-lovin'-like-something-from-the-oven and the Feminine Mystique and how it is possible for people to be the unconscious instruments of values they would strenuously reject on a conscious level.
This highlights that weird building up of the 'earth mother' stereotype of femininity that is actually a throwback rather than progressive.
They are less in rebellion against the society than ignorant of it, able only to feed back certain of its most publicised self doubts, Vietnam, Saran-Wrap, diet pills, the Bomb.
Interesting points about youth and naivety but also a lack of educated and informed intellectual underpinning to opinions and lifestyle. I'm sure this is a sweeping generalisation on Didion's part and there clearly were lots of intellectual engagements that undermined conservative status quo but I'd had a more romantic idealisation about proactive rejections of older values and that's not really what these pieces show.
Judy wrote: "As well as the article that Kathleen posted a link to, there is also another older article by Debra Miller online, again on the LA Times website, which again is very interesting and retells the sto..."Thanks for sharing that, Judy! What a sad story, from growing up with such fear, through all the impacts of that tragedy.
I was growing up near San Francisco at this time. Too young to make my own way to Haight-Ashbury, I got to be a spectator of the times rather than a participant, and reap the benefit of the music from the safety of my record player, and absorb its idealism, which thankfully provided an important counter to the deluge of brainwashing messages of the time. "Nothin says lovin like somethin from the oven" is just one of so many!
Ben wrote: "Fair point. At that point in my life I was more aware of Scott MacKenzie's music than Charles Manson's murderous cult."I think that through most of the country no one had any knowledge about Manson until after the attacks.
We all listened to Scott and his song on the radio.
Roman Clodia wrote: "Ben wrote: "I'd add to the list of Joan Baez songs "Diamonds and Rust", her view in song of her romance with Bob Dylan and their folk days together."Ooh, I like that! Some of her covers are good ..."
I have something 8 LPs of Joan's even still. Yet I haven't listened to her in a long time. This is a reminder to listen to more Joan and Judy Collins and the like. I do have some CDs of Dylan and the Band so I've been hearing them more often.
Jan C wrote: "I have something 8 LPs of Joan's even still. Yet I haven't listened to her in a long time. This is a reminder to listen to more Joan and Judy Collins and the like. I do have some CDs of Dylan and the Band so I've been hearing them more often. "I find that nowadays both Baez and Collins often seem a little bit saccharine for my taste. They were both very fine singers with fabulous voices, but there's something about the smooth, tidily produced sound which sometimes doesn't quite ring true for me any more. There are noble exceptions, of course, like Diamonds And Rust which Baez wrote herself, but while the cover versions give me a powerful nostalgic twinge, musically they leave me a little cold these days and I prefer the often rougher originals by Dylan, The Band etc.
Joni Mitchell is quite rude about Collins's cover of Both Sides Now, which is rather graceless given that it's the record that first brought Mitchell to a lot of people's attention - including mine - and she owes it a lot, but musically I can see what she means.
OTOH, Judy Collins inspired Suite: Judy Blue Eyes (see what they did there?) on Crosby, Stills and Nash's eponymous first album, which is fantastic, so what with that and what Both Sides Now led me to, I owe her a lot.
Sorry if this upsets the Joan and Judy fans - it's just my personal taste!
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Not really a fan, but have seen Joni Mitchell in concert, when fairly young, as my brother wanted to go. The whole Joan Baez article was just so of the era though, wasn't it? This weird idea that she would educate the youth - in what, one wonders? She at least came across with some belief in what she was doing, I suppose, however misguided. There just seem to have been so many runaways, you wonder whether they returned home by the Seventies...
I think that for Judy Collins and Joan Baez, and for many of the American folkies, projecting simplicity, purity and innocence was part of their image, and the image of the movement.I wouldn't generally put Joni Mitchell in that camp, but even her lyrics could have that style.
We are stardust
We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
Ben wrote: "I think that for Judy Collins and Joan Baez, and for many of the American folkies, projecting simplicity, purity and innocence was part of their image, and the image of the movement."Yes, I think that's a fair point, Ben. I've probably become too old and full of Weltschmertz for that to speak to me directly nowadays. :o)
Agreed about Joni Mitchell, too. A genius who trod her own path, which occasionally intersected with the mores of the time.
I just finished the title essay, and was disappointed. Maybe in its time it was revealing, but it felt like she set out with a goal and found details that supported her idea that society was falling apart. She says in the preface that she thought it failed to get her point across. I think if she would have made it more personal and included her own feelings, coming at the movement at the age she was, she could have shown some holes, done some personal comparisons, and I would have absorbed what she was trying to say and liked the essay better.
Sid wrote: "Jan C wrote: "I have something 8 LPs of Joan's even still. Yet I haven't listened to her in a long time. This is a reminder to listen to more Joan and Judy Collins and the like. I do have some CDs ..."I should note that Joan/Judy albums were purchased +40 years ago. I never bought any Joni albums though. I think I may have downloaded 2 songs of hers on Amazon Music.
Was much more into Dylan, The Band, big fan of Phil Ochs/Tom Paxton. Although Ochs may be remembered more than Paxton because he committed suicide (he'd already written the best song he would ever write) and Paxton hung around.
Jan, you and I have similar music tastes. Not a week goes by for me without listening to Blonde on Blonde or Highway 61. I've just started Fire and Rain and am awash in memories of the old days.
Jan C wrote: "I should note that Joan/Judy albums were purchased +40 years ago. I never bought any Joni albums though. I think I may have downloaded 2 songs of hers on Amazon Music."Ha - other way round with me! I never bought any Baez or Collins albums, but discovered Joni Mitchell via Collins's singing Both Sides Now on the radio and bought Clouds, Mitchell's 2nd album which had just come out...then immediately went and bought Songs To A Seagull and diligently waited for and bought all her albums for the next few years.
But I was into Dylan and The Band, too. Barbara, you have named my two favourite Dylan albums (and two of my all-time favourite albums, full stop). Highway 61 was the first I bought and I still love it; Blonde On Blonde was a bit later for me (partly for financial reasons!) but I love that too - and in my view Dylan deserved the Nobel Prize just for the line "The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face. 😊 It's all awash with memories for me, too and I'm expecting powerfully poignant twinges when I start Fire And Rain.
Sorry - it's always a mistake to get me started on music! Just to return to books for a moment, I think the rather predictably titled Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell is a very good biography of Joni Mitchell. My review if anyone's interested: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
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I'm trying to put my finger on the qualities of what I admire about Joan Didion's essays, and I think part of it is the way she takes things at face value, not necessarily trying to make sense of things that do not, on the surface, make sense, not necessarily giving people or movements the benefit of the doubt.This was just as true for me in her approach toward the nonsense of the right wing Republicans in her political essays of the 80's and 90's as it was in her essays on the Flower Children and Joan Baez, and in the Joan Baez essay, the statements she quotes make the opponents of her school sound even more ridiculous than Joan Baez does when saying
"Sometimes I tell myself, 'come on, Baez, you're just like everybody else'', but then I'm not happy with that either".
Didion talks about her goal of writing "flatly and directly". It works for me.
Sid wrote: "Jan C wrote: "I should note that Joan/Judy albums were purchased +40 years ago. I never bought any Joni albums though. I think I may have downloaded 2 songs of hers on Amazon Music."Ha - other wa..."
Sid, I enjoyed your review of the Joni biography. I had the same trajectory of being introduced to her music, and have this vivid memory of the Songs to a Seagull album propped up by the stereo, my brother and I staring at each other in awe, and the album sitting there week after week because we just didn't seem to want to listen to anything else anymore.
Ben wrote: "I'm trying to put my finger on the qualities of what I admire about Joan Didion's essays, and I think part of it is the way she takes things at face value, not necessarily trying to make sense of t..."This is a really good observation, and I think her flat and direct style works for me too. But while I love the style, the taking things at face value as you say, sometimes the content can provoke a bit of a negative reaction, like it did for me with the Haight Ashbury piece, and like what Judy says about the Baez piece.
I thought the notebook and self-respect essays were great--unusually deep for such short pieces.
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But, on the other hand, I did get the feeling that she'd already made up her mind about the Baez school and had preconceived it as a bit of hollow hippy foolishness.
I love reading Didion for her stylish writing (direct, yes, but not flat to me) but I'm no more inclined to agree with everything she says than I am to go along with all my real life friends' opinions.
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Roman Clodia wrote: "I usually read on my way to work but all this chat about music made me listen to Joni Mitchell's Blue album this morning :))"Delighted to hear it! Blue is certainly in my Top 5 albums ever. How did you get on with it?
Barbara wrote: "Jan, you and I have similar music tastes. Not a week goes by for me without listening to Blonde on Blonde or Highway 61. I've just started Fire and Rain and am awash in memories of the old days."I've started reading it in my music/book room and listening to the old LPs as I come across them in the book. When I was reading the early part about CSN I was driving myself crazy thinking of the songs and not being where I could play them.
Sid wrote: "Jan C wrote: "I should note that Joan/Judy albums were purchased +40 years ago. I never bought any Joni albums though. I think I may have downloaded 2 songs of hers on Amazon Music."Ha - other wa..."
I just bought a best of Joni cd so I will have one shortly.
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That's a very preceptive comment, Judy :)
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Love it! I have listened to all the individual tracks before on shuffle but hearing it as a whole album is a different experience. I'm keen to read that biography you recommended now.
That biography is very expensive to buy used on Amazon UK, but much less so on Amazon in the US. I may pick up a copy when I’m there later this year.
Taking orders ….
I just finished the Monster essay about Hollywood, written I believe before Didion and her husband John Dunne became involved in writing screenplays. (I recently saw The Panic in Needle Park and noted their names as screenwriters with surprise!) Now reading this, and seeing her mentions of A Star is Born, I learn that the two also worked on the screenplay of the 70's Star is Born version.Interesting article about their screenwriting:
https://slate.com/culture/2007/07/pan...
Roman Clodia wrote: "Sid wrote: "Blue is certainly in my Top 5 albums ever. How did you get on with it?"Love it! I have listened to all the individual tracks before on shuffle but hearing it as a whole album is a different experience."
This merely confirms what I already knew; that you are a woman of the exceptional taste and discernment. 😉
(Since saying it's definitely in my top 5 albums, I've been worrying about what the other four might be. I'm struggling to get it down to twenty, never mind five - but I do know that if I could only save five, Blue would probably be the first I'd grab.)
I've read a couple of the Didion essays (Baez and Haight-Ashbury) and admire their style, but find them slightly repellent. She seems somehow always to try to get people to condemn themselves or expose themselves as foolish in some way. They present themselves as neutral observation, but there's some pretty plain editorialising in their presentation, I think. Nothing wrong with that in an essay, of course, but I'm not sure they're quite up-front about it.
Just my take on it, of course, and I'm happy to be corrected.
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That's a great comment, Sid. I hadn't been able to put it to myself like that, but I think that's exactly why I'm feeling increasingly uneasy as I read a few more of the essays. The pieces are of course beautifully written, and yet there often seems to be a sort of sneer or put-down that she doesn't exactly voice but manages to put across anyway.
I've just read the essay on the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions think tank, and it's very similar to the one on Baez's school, again dismissively suggesting the discussions were largely fluff. Which of course some of them may have been, but I don't think pulling out a few feeble comments and mentioning the names of film stars who took part really shows that.
I found an article about the think tank online and an amazing array of people were involved, ranging from Aldous Huxley to Martin Luther King, so surely there must have been some worthwhile discussions:
https://www.independent.com/2009/05/2...
I would really like to know more about Didion's own political views and her take on the Vietnam War, as it is hard to know where she is coming from. But doubtless her readers at the time did know this and I'm sure I am missing a lot as someone from another country reading these pieces decades later.
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That's a very preceptive comment, Judy :)"
Thank you, RC :) I feel a bit as if I'm floundering around reading these! I really noticed with the John Wayne piece that she spoke to him and had dinner with him and yet he hardly seems to be quoted and it's more about the contrast between the figure on the screen, the image viewers see, and the battle with cancer and ageing behind the scenes.
It's probably worth reading her essay Salvador and her essays about the Republican Party in the last 80's and 90's. Her skepticism and ability to draw brilliant portraits of unreasonable or outrageous behaviour really pays off.
Judy wrote: "I've just read the essay on the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions think tank, and it's very similar to the one on Baez's school, again dismissively suggesting the discussions were largely fluff. Which of course some of them may have been, but I don't think pulling out a few feeble comments and mentioning the names of film stars who took part really shows that."Yes - agreed, Judy. Of course there's a lot of fatuous waffle in places like that, as there is in a great many places, but with names like Huxley and King it's unlikely to have been entirely that. I don't mind Didion's exposure of what waffle there was, but I think it's more of a hatchet job than she lets on and that makes me a bit uncomfortable.
It's considered almost sacrilege to say this, but I really didn't like A Year Of Magical Thinking. Every one deals with grief in their own way, of course, but Didion's way certainly wasn't my way and I didn't like how the the almost hagiographic responses to the book frowned on any mildly dissenting views. I admit that may have influenced my view of her other work.
She could write, though - I have to give her that!
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"It's considered almost sacrilege to say this, but I really didn't like A Year Of Magical Thinking"
You and me both Sid
Like you, I was disappointed by The Year of Magical Thinking however I was mightily impressed by the fictional Play It As It Lays
Contrarily, I am a fan of The Year of Magical Thinking. Whether or not the grieving process she describes is universal, I found it an honest and moving account, and the air of unreality she experienced was very much like what my father described to me after my mother died.It's fair to say of some of her essays that they are scarcely disguised put-downs, although I would say her tone and approach is milder than a sneer. Janet Malcolm too was criticised for betraying or misleading her essay subjects, and both have written about the fact that journalists and other writers do, in the routine practice of their trade, exploit their subjects for fame and profit. I certainly did my best to stay out of the clutches of journalists during my career.
In addition to enjoying the elegance of her style, her essays enable me to see new dimensions of her subjects, puncturing celebrity images, exposing the shallow opinions and naked manipulations of politicians, and in the case of Salvador, penetrating a wall of disinformation put up by the US government and supported by the media.
I have to agree that I, too, was somewhat disappointed. Perhaps I read it too soon after my father died.My mother thought that Bob Greene's mother wrote the best book on grieving. And she wound up in a grief counseling group. I never did know Bob Greene's mother's name. But she really liked her book.
She couldn't stand the Didion book.
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In general, I think I prefer articles which aren't put-downs of their subjects, although that is not to say that everyone should write hagiography, of course. And Ben puts a powerful case for why her put-downs are sometimes worthwhile, especially when exposing "the shallow opinions and naked manipulations of politicians".
So far, I found the initial true crime (if it was a crime) article the most powerful, where I don't think she was trying to put someone down but to look at how the story fits into the context of the place and time. I'm not usually a true crime reader but found this piece riveting. Some of the other pieces feel more shallow to me, but that isn't all that surprising as I don't think they have had as much research put into them.
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Perhaps it's a little unfair to judge this book as a book since the individual pieces were clearly written for a range of publications and must have had varying limitations in terms of word count etc. placed upon them.
I've got her The White Album so it will be interesting to compare that.
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That's true, RC - I've found the same with other collections, like one by Laurie Lee where some of the pieces were clearly quick articles he had dashed out for publication and others were up there with his best writing.
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https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/6...
Very interesting article. It's a classic example of bureaucratic encrustation, like the two questions one is asked before boarding an airplane: "Have you packed your bags yourself? Could anyone have interfered with your luggage?"How long will the blood tests be required?
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To go off at a tangent, reading this piece, it struck me how similar Didion's writing style sometimes is to Hemingway's - almost like pastiche at times. I thought he must have been an influence on her, and, from googling their two names together, I see he was a big influence - according to this article, she said she taught herself to write by typing out some of his pieces.
https://medium.com/@twmerrigan/how-jo...
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I find I am having to look up a lot of references in Didion and there are some where I can't find anything and have to leave it. I suppose this isn't surprising with pieces that were written 50 years ago though, especially for a UK reader.
Judy wrote: "I read the actual Slouching Towards Bethlehem essay last night - a powerful if depressing piece. I do feel there must have been a lot more to Haight-Ashbury than this article shows, with its focus ..."That's an interesting insight, Judy. I too felt the Haight-Ashbury essay reflected only one part of the place's story. This direct, spare writing style is brilliant and illuminating, but may be better at showing a viewpoint than giving a whole picture. I've certainly felt that way about Hemmingway.
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Thank you, Kathleen - I think that's right. The spare writing style creates powerful and haunting images but often leaves readers wondering what more is behind that image, probably intentionally leaving much unexplained.
I was interested to see that the article I linked to compared some of Didion's writing with A Moveable Feast by Hemingway, a book I loved although not everyone in the group agreed.
It struck me, reading this, that, in addition to any stylistic echoes, a similarity between that book and this one is the portrayal of damaged young people - Hemingway's 'Lost Generation' wandering through Europe after WW1, with a lot of alcohol involved, Didion's rootless hippies wandering through California and taking a lot of drugs.
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Once thing I'd add is that Didion isn't writing any kind of objective history, she's writing opinion pieces for magazines where bias or subjectivity is part of the point. Maybe it's a bit like John Crace today writing in The Guardian - we don't read him for a rounded, unbiased piece of reportage, we go in expecting a vociferous take-down of Tory politics and politicians.
Roman Clodia wrote: "Interesting comments about Didion and Hemingway - I hadn't seen any stylistic echoes but then haven't read A Moveable Feast, only Hem's fiction.Once thing I'd add is that Didion isn't writing any..."
That's an excellent point, that these are opinion pieces. The Slouching essay struck me because I grew up near San Francisco, and there was so much more to the story. It reminded me that when we read pieces like this many years later, it's good to remember that it's just one view. With a popular essay like this, it may be the only view many people will read.
About Hemingway and Didion, I never thought about comparing them before either, though I too really liked A Moveable Feast. Maybe this spare style makes all the stuff other than style more prominent. Thanks for the link, Judy!
Roman Clodia wrote: "Once thing I'd add is that Didion isn't writing any kind of objective history, she's writing opinion pieces for magazines where bias or subjectivity is part of the point. Maybe it's a bit like John Crace today writing in The Guardian - we don't read him for a rounded, unbiased piece of reportage, we go in expecting a vociferous take-down of Tory politics and politicians."Fair point, RC. That's probably why I struggled with Didion's essays in this book; at this distance I think I'm looking for something fuller and more rounded. I wonder how Crace's articles/essays will read in 2072?
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Interesting question. I suspect they'd have to be so weighed down with notes and glossaries that they'd lose their point. A moniker like 'The Convict' would have to be explained with tedious background so that it would lose its immediacy.
Btw, does anyone else feel Crace has been losing his wit to increased bitterness recently? Understandable, but a shame.
Maybe it's a bit like Sparrow in the latest Mick Herron - international readers may not make the immediate Dominic Cummings connection that UK readers do. Though the book still stands up in terms of plot, of course.
But we do, I think, have to frame types of writing differently: a rounded history written with hindsight is always likely to be different from opinion pieces penned at the time, especially ones with a different politics and perspective from the reader's own.
Reading the 20th Century
Books mentioned in this topic
The Hotel Years: Wanderings in Europe between the Wars (other topics)A Moveable Feast (other topics)
A Moveable Feast (other topics)
The White Album (other topics)
The Year of Magical Thinking (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Joseph Roth (other topics)Bob Greene (other topics)
The first section on 1960s California was the most fascinating for me, though I loved her 'Paradise' on Hawaii where the dead from Pearl Harbour are being joined, as she writes, by repatriated bodies from Vietnam.
Susan, I do agree that there are US cultural references that I just didn't get.