by John Didion
Η Joan Didion με δεινή πένα και υπηρετώντας το ιδανικό του "See enough and write it down" καταγράφει το σημείο που τέμνεται ο περιβάλλων χώρος και το ανθρώπινο μυαλό και περιγράφει με ζωντάνια και με σαφή αντίληψη της βαρύτητας της περιρρέουσας ατμόσφαιρας την Καλιφόρνια και τη Νέα Υόρκη, μεταξύ άλλ...
At thirty three or four, Didion of Slouching Towards Bethlehem is still a girl. I recognize the signs. (Some people capable of voicing their thoughts on subjects such as "Self-Respect" and "Morality" are born middle-aged; others, possibly due to their specific upbringing, remain questioning, uncerta...
I feel uneasy about reviewing Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem. That it is, the idea of writing an essay about a collection of essays combines with something in her voice that makes me very aware that I am creating a sort of Russian nesting doll of commentary, but I will attempt it all the ...
"Our favorite people and our favorite stories become so not by any inherent virtue, but because they illustrate something deep in the grain, something unadmitted." All the essays are insightful and well written. However, I like some more than the others. So, I am only going to talk about those I lik...
I read this in college and I was ambivalent. I was young and naive and ignorant and undecided about many things (this is still true - how the horizons of ignorance expand as we learn!), and Didion didn't help me because I couldn't decide whether to agree with her, and I couldn't feel what she felt o...
Joan Didion is an insightful and skeptical thinker, an astute ironist, and a beautiful prose stylist: Slouching Towards Bethlehem exemplifies her craft. While all of her essays are exemplary in form, some fall by the wayside of memory, and even only a week removed from my first foray in Didion, only...
DNF. Guys, I've tried twice and failed both times. Didion is, to me, evidence that the world of publishing is tilted primarily toward the Didions of the world. Happily, this isn't an entirely hopeless situation because I'm not even sure we're from the same planet. Ah, here we go. Who doesn't enjoy v...
All these essays are worth reading, but "Goodbye to All That" is perfect. I can't even pick a favourite quote, I keep wanting to quote the whole thing. It is such an amazing evocation of time and place, of what it means to shift into a different phase of your life and how it isn't obvious that you h...
Sharp wonderful essays that have held up beautifully since they were written in the mid-sixties and a sure cure for nostalgia. She's at her best writing about her native California, especially in the famous title essay. Things were going to hell in a handbasket back then too.
Didion is no slouch herself; Didion can write. She shows her talent in these twenty short essays, first published in the mid-1960's. Clear writing. Crisp writing. Beautiful.Some of the topics for her essays feel dated now, forty years later. That's okay; despite this, the essays were so well written...
Log in with Facebook 
