Let me begin with the book’s eponymous essay.
The strangest thing about reading this is the image it gives of hippies. Growing up in California, I’ve met plenty of people one might call hippies. In my experience a typical hippie is old, poorly dressed, and not very interesting to talk to. It’s hard to imagine these same people ever being young, much less being typified as children. I was also struck by her assertion that the hippy movement was “evidence of atomization, the proof that things fall apart” (p.xiii). Now that the major discussion in almost every arena seems to center on rebuilding broken systems, her diagnosis reads as obvious and prescient: the hippy movement was clearly the first sign that America (and the Western World) had lost it’s sense of itself. Or, as Didion writes:
We were seeing the desperate attempt of a handful of pathetically unequipped children to create to create a community in a social vacuum….This was not a traditional generational rebellion. At some point between 1945 and 1967 we somehow neglected to tell these children the rules of the game we happened to be playing. (pp.122-23)
Aside from “Slouching Towards Behlehem,” my two favorite pieces were “On Self-Respect” and “Los Angeles Notebook.” The former is just good sense. The latter, besides appealing to my typically Californian narcissism, is a very good anecdotal portrait of my city. That it is a series of anecdotal sketches is a major part of it’s quality. Los Angeles is too large and various to be properly conceived of in whole. The fractured nature of Didion’s piece is appropriate to LA’s own fractured character.
I bought and read this book, not out of interest, but on recommendation. But Joan Didion is now one of my favorite writers. I suppose I’ll have to go ahead and buy the massive Modern Library collection.