Joan Didion

 

I've now read most -- if not all -- of Joan Didion's major collections of essays. But having just finished The White Album, I feel that I've experienced another side of Didion, another angle into her thinking. The White Album is, in my reading, the most heavily focused on California: on what it means to be from the state, to live there, to experience it, to drive through it. And more: there are lively, moving essays on California's citizens and politicians and activists. What I most appreciated about The White Album, though, was less its range and more its honesty: Didion has a keen sense of smell, and anything contrived or stilted -- or both -- is subject to her immediate inquiry. Didion has some admiration for the later 1960s, but she's not entirely enthralled: so much of that idealism landed flat five years later: as if it never really had a chance -- because, according to Didion, it did not. But this does not make Didion a pessimist or a social conservative: instead, it makes her a realistic with a good sense of humor, and an even better appreciation for California: namely, its state as a dream, its state of dreaming. The White Album was a pleasure to read: in particular the parts about Nancy Reagan and the Reagan gubernatorial mansion in Sacramento. I won't say more about these: that's for you to read and enjoy!