Joan Didion

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All I remember are the references to fried chicken.

So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 24 December 2021 21:36 (two years ago) link

some writers have this tone and rhythm that's intoxicating, whenever I read her I would find myself thinking sentences that were derivative of her

I get that way with some rappers, MF DOOM or Sean Price or Migos, there's something addictive about the cadence that gets stuck in my head

so I dunno I'll let the better read people hash our what it all meant but she had a Distinctive Thing, which how many people who write ever have?

whether or not she was a good person or w/e that cool detached style and how observational she was was something that I was happy to visit on occasion

Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Saturday, 25 December 2021 00:10 (two years ago) link

That strikes me as quite a misguided take.

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, December 24

OTM... though it does say a lot about the taker. I read the whole thing and her commitment to the bit is impressive.

Didion was quite unusual as a writer in being more popular at the end of her life than ever before. Though partly I think the popularity was shallow, based on an idea of her, from people who had seen a programme about her but not read much.

― the pinefox, Friday, December 24, 2021

the canonization of a writer's writer in the Instagram era has always been... weird. but there are legit possibly more people now who know her as the Smart Grief Lady than remaining cargo cultists wearing through their third copy of The White Album.

corollary: on today's evidence via social, Didion UC Riverside 1975 is the new DFW Kenyon 2005

poster of sparks (rogermexico.), Saturday, 25 December 2021 02:34 (two years ago) link

Lots of funnies here.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/dec/23/joan-didion-in-her-own-words-23-of-the-best-quotes

xyzzzz__, Saturday, 25 December 2021 12:20 (two years ago) link

there's that UC Riverside

poster of sparks (rogermexico.), Saturday, 25 December 2021 15:49 (two years ago) link

“the grave’s a fine and lovely place, but none I think do there embrace”
- Joan Didion

poster of sparks (rogermexico.), Saturday, 25 December 2021 22:11 (two years ago) link

i was so annoyed when a few years ago they published a collection of shitty writers’ essays about leaving new york and actually called it “goodbye to all that”

Also the title of a fine memoir of WWI by Robert Graves.

o. nate, Tuesday, 28 December 2021 03:47 (two years ago) link

a fine memoir of WWI by Robert Graves which I've read twice and is sitting on my shelf right now.

more difficult than I look (Aimless), Tuesday, 28 December 2021 04:02 (two years ago) link

joan didion fucking ruled, i’m sorry: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1979/10/11/theyll-take-manhattan-3/

STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Wednesday, 29 December 2021 01:49 (two years ago) link

but why him? why not pick on someone her own size? (what about him provoked her?) secrets of the dead ... (why I fear losing my mother)

youn, Thursday, 30 December 2021 18:10 (two years ago) link

Various people have linked to, quoted or cited this essay: 'Joan Didion: Only Disconnect' by Barbara Grizzutti Harrison. I have only just read it. My sense is that it was really a review of THE WHITE ALBUM, which also (LRB-style) took in the rest of the oeuvre to that point.

As such, it does *not* reliably stand as a commentary on Didion's work *after* 1979 - some of which might be a quite different matter.

As a commentary on Didion's work *up to* 1979, I think it's harsh, sometimes off-target, sometimes tonally misguided -- yet also partially accurate; suggestive; perceptive.

I think Harrison is right to suspect that Didion, in this work, isn't such a great stylist. More importantly, I think she's right to say that Didion's emphasis is repeatedly 'conservative' in being disdainful about anything leftist, progressive or inclined to collective action to improve the world. This attitude is very recognisable across conservative writing. As Twitter poster Elvis Bunuelo (whose tweet encouraged me to read the essay) commented: Didion was an interesting reactionary writer, especially interesting because people rarely pointed out that she was reactionary. Perhaps that's overstatement. I still think the later Didion might be significantly different from the earlier. But _as a statement about the earlier work_, I think it's partially accurate.

So, I don't wholly buy Harrison's critique, but it also contains far too much accurate material to be merely dismissed.

It remains the case that one of the best things ever written on Didion was by Martin Amis. But Amis's repute is now so bad that people, perhaps understandably, won't be keen to believe that.

the pinefox, Thursday, 30 December 2021 18:43 (two years ago) link

the title essay in slouching towards bethlehem has always been my least favorite part of it

the white album seems more tuned to ‘70s apocalyptic dread than any particularly reactionary philosophy but i am relying on memory here

STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Thursday, 30 December 2021 18:46 (two years ago) link

surely not giving a woody allen stan the satisfaction of a detailed reply is not joan didion bullying a reader

STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Thursday, 30 December 2021 18:47 (two years ago) link

i've seen a lot of people assert that didion was reactionary, not just in her skepticism toward leftists but in general. but i don't really see much evidence of that in her work. it's certainly odd and upsetting that she not only voted for goldwater but seems to have continued to admire him; she mentions that in the introduction to political fictions. but it also seems like a weird anomaly in her life: nothing in any of those later political essays strikes me as being written from a conservative perspective, quite the opposite really. and yeah, she wrote for national review in the early 60s, but so did garry wills. i don't think liking john wayne movies necessarily means much. (i like a few of them myself.) that said, i can also completely understand why ppl would be put off by the goldwater thing. i read an interview with renata adler once where she was gushing about her friendship with henry kissinger and i've always been a little put off reading her work by that.

(The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, 30 December 2021 20:20 (two years ago) link

srsly where's the evidence she was conservative or even wrote as a disaffected or disillusioned conservative? She doesn't much like Bill Clinton, but she limits the contempt to a paragraph in Political Fictions in an essay perfectly limning what Tim Russert's Washington DC lookd lik.

So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 30 December 2021 20:29 (two years ago) link

My own sense that Didion was, in some ways, at some times, somewhat conservative -- has nothing to do with John Wayne (whom I love), nor Bill Clinton, not even Barry Goldwater (though that does sound very relevant).

Rather, it's about the conservative tendency in her earlier writing (ie: mainly in STB and TWA) which is, as I suggested just above, sceptical of progress, social change, ideals, radicalism, you name it. Her attack on feminism is one, extreme example of this, but even if you took that away as an anomaly, the mood would inhere. Barbara Harrison cites case after case of it. What Harrison helped me to remember is how Didion tends to displace and dismiss political projects and progressive goals in favour or personal or private life, or sheer contingency that can't (as radicals would like) be planned or improved, or existential void -- and so on.

These claims risk becoming general and thus unsustainable, but as I say, Harrison cites numerous specific examples, and it does recall my own experience of reading that period of Didion.

However, I also sense that the later political journalism (which people here have mentioned several times) is rather different. I wonder if one would really need to say that there were different eras of Didion, and it wasn't all just one thing.

the pinefox, Thursday, 30 December 2021 21:22 (two years ago) link

it's as if we want to justify disliking her

it's okay if y'all do!

So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 30 December 2021 21:37 (two years ago) link

Skeptical of humankind's capacity for progress more so than the goals, etc.

Max Hamburgers (Eric H.), Thursday, 30 December 2021 21:41 (two years ago) link

which makes her more liberal than the average ILXer

So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 30 December 2021 21:52 (two years ago) link

whaaat? that distinction has absolutely no meaning in application xp. and that's just ridiculous, alfred. i doubt anyone here would have voted for barry goldwater.

in any case, the pinefox and barbara harrison are clearly otm.

Nedlene Grendel as Basenji Holmo (map), Thursday, 30 December 2021 21:56 (two years ago) link

it's as if we want to justify disliking her

it's okay if y'all do!

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 30 December 2021 bookmarkflaglink

Be easy to just dislike her with no reasons huh?

xyzzzz__, Thursday, 30 December 2021 21:58 (two years ago) link

which makes her more liberal than the average ILXer


Speak for yourself. Genuinely surprised to learn that there’s any dispute that she was at least small c conservative in her views tbh? That’s a different judgement than saying her work wasn’t worth reading.

mardheamac (gyac), Thursday, 30 December 2021 22:00 (two years ago) link

I'm saying the average ILXer sees no capacity for progress.

Be easy to just dislike her with no reasons huh?

― xyzzzz__

like me and liver!

So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 30 December 2021 22:02 (two years ago) link

it's okay if y'all do!


Replies suggest otherwise tbph. Really don’t understand this deeply weird reaction to a pretty mild couple of pinefox posts, if you’re actually her dad or something, sorry for your loss, maybe think about logging off though.

mardheamac (gyac), Thursday, 30 December 2021 22:07 (two years ago) link

I had my tongue in cheek when I made the remark about disliking her; apologies if it didn't come off.

This is the Harrison piece, right? https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/103/didion-per-harrison.html

Reading her post-1980 material collected in After Henry and Political Fictions, I suspect Ronald Reagan broke her brain, like Reagan did for a lot of elites. Even old-time socialists like Irving Howe, who'd spent a lifetime anticipating a conservative reaction, wrote mid-decade about underestimating its strength.

So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 30 December 2021 22:07 (two years ago) link

pinefox has been terrific, especially the last post

So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 30 December 2021 22:08 (two years ago) link

her articles at https://www.nybooks.com/contributors/joan-didion/ are a good window on her real-time reactions to Reagan and subsequent administrations ...
I think as she got older her knowledge of US politics and policy deepened and she dropped the small-c contrarianism that weakens some of her early essays

Brad C., Friday, 31 December 2021 00:04 (two years ago) link

Thanks for that link. (I think her conservatism might have started out like that of The Village Green Preservation Society (as an existential reaction to chaos and disorder and a desire to preserve what she valued and cherished) and that conservatism might connote something different now that there is the possibility of association with the evolving establishment reaction to the far right in the U.S. and in Europe, as well as the xenophobia, racism, and fear. I think maybe she was more forgiving as she got older. The "Oh, wow." made me think of defensive tactics adopted my little old ladies in urban settings, but she was much younger then.)

youn, Friday, 31 December 2021 20:17 (two years ago) link

(I don't think she was hostile or fearful, but rather skeptical and pessimistic and had the inclinations of a reporter.)

youn, Friday, 31 December 2021 20:35 (two years ago) link

(Inadequately researched conjectures regarding Allen and conservatism ...

Allen regretted that he didn't go to college. Didion regretted that she was not accepted by the college of her choice and eventually took it into perspective. [1]

Didion moved to Manhattan as an adult and was an outsider to the East Coast intellectual establishment. Allen had the advantage of having grown up there and was naturally familiar with the East Coast elite's cultural references. Both were not above namedropping. They addressed overlapping audiences from different temperaments.

Both valued merit and bought into meritocracy, which has not survived globalization and the global concentration of wealth and power. Economic insecurity has not provided a sufficient cause to unify the left, which remains fractured for want of unifying beliefs other than concerns about livelihood and the social contract that in themselves do not seem sufficient. I don't think anyone knows the answer to this yet.)

[1] https://wowwritingworkshop.com/on-being-unchosen-by-the-college-of-ones-choice/

youn, Saturday, 1 January 2022 19:44 (two years ago) link

(Conjecture: Didion objected to, or found distasteful, Allen's treatment of his female characters and roles but had not yet worked out her own stance on feminism.)

youn, Sunday, 2 January 2022 06:52 (two years ago) link

people always ignore or are rude about the novels which I always feel are the best things she did

I consider her a novelist foremost. she's better known for her nonfiction because it's easier to treat. the novels are slippery and masterful examples of the form; with the exception of the last one, each is better than its predecessor. democracy is one of the great books of the 20c.

J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Sunday, 2 January 2022 16:11 (two years ago) link

democracy's the one i haven't read, guess i'm doing that this year

STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Sunday, 2 January 2022 16:55 (two years ago) link

... as the granddaughter of a geologist I learned early to anticipate the absolute mutability of hills and waterfalls and even islands. When a hill slumps into the ocean I see the order in it. When a 5.2 on the Richter scale wrenches the writing table in my own room in my own house in my own particular Welbeck Street I keep on typing. A hill is a transitional accommodation to stress, and ego may be a similar accommodation. A waterfall is a self-correcting maladjustment of stream to structure, and so, for all I know, is technique.

dope

STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Wednesday, 5 January 2022 15:00 (two years ago) link

"birds exploded in the air"

Still haunts me

nonsensei (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, 5 January 2022 15:08 (two years ago) link

Basically in agreement with the thread consensus here on her earlier work having some reactionary and conservative impulses in it but it's not mentioned enough how much her later writing goes totally against that - imagine any conservative writer covering the Central Park Five the way she did.

Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 5 January 2022 16:07 (two years ago) link

Much like with my Midwestern cousin who lives in Santa Monica, I attribute at least some of the "conservativism" to where Joan lived (and, in her case, when).

Max Hamburgers (Eric H.), Wednesday, 5 January 2022 16:15 (two years ago) link

Ross Douthat's column in the NY Times today is about the conservative (small-c) side of Didion, and argues that the early stuff is the best:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/05/opinion/joan-didion-conservative.html

o. nate, Wednesday, 5 January 2022 16:17 (two years ago) link

Columns very much in character.

Max Hamburgers (Eric H.), Wednesday, 5 January 2022 16:27 (two years ago) link

Much like with my Midwestern cousin who lives in Santa Monica, I attribute at least some of the "conservativism" to where Joan lived (and, in her case, when).

― Max Hamburgers (Eric H.), Wednesday, January 5, 2022 4:15 PM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

like 80% of this country has always been and will always be small-c conservative, we're a settler colonial state. light lol at the impulse to handwave it though, like she's a beloved aunt. i guarantee joan didion didn't care anything about you and i or anyone with less power than a school board member.

Nedlene Grendel as Basenji Holmo (map), Wednesday, 5 January 2022 16:33 (two years ago) link

i didn't mean to pick on you, eric, sorry. i should just avoid this thread tbh.

Nedlene Grendel as Basenji Holmo (map), Wednesday, 5 January 2022 16:52 (two years ago) link

If revering Didion despite (or, really, outside of) politics is cause for me to be picked on, pick away.

Max Hamburgers (Eric H.), Wednesday, 5 January 2022 17:18 (two years ago) link

One more essay on the inadequacies of Didion.

The result of Lakewood’s economic collapse, according to Didion, was a generation of youth with no prospects whose blind rage, pent up and convected, exploded into the shameful spectacle of the Spur Posse, a vile pack of Lakewood High troglodytes who achieved nationwide notoriety for their sexual abuse of girls as young as ten, getting in fights, dealing drugs, committing burglaries, setting off a pipe bomb on someone’s front porch, etc. (and later, angling to get paid to tell their ugly tales on ugly television shows like “NightTalk with Jane Whitney” and “Jerry Springer.”)

“Trouble in Lakewood” is about ten thousand times better than “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”—better researched and thought out, better observed and better written. The latter piece draws a frankly kind of unbelievable portrait of dumb, unwashed hippies who fed acid to their five-year-old kid and spent the whole day eight miles high, responding to most of the author’s questions with “Wow.” God knows how Didion found people quite as messed-up as these. I am a Seventies kid myself and I am here to tell you that people got high a lot back then, but I never even heard of anyone getting as wasted as Didion’s hippies do, outside of underground comix. It’s incredible that all of them didn’t just die in a big heap from all that acid and meth… okay, one of them lands in the hospital with pneumonia.

In any case both essays, written thirty years apart, are getting at roughly the same thing, namely that the American Dream is a myth and a fraud because the tough pioneer spirit that animated Didion’s own ancestors, and also John Wayne, is dead; and now these gross, unworthy new people, such as hippies and illiterate mall-shopping Lakewood matrons, deserve what they get—more or less.

Didion’s work is an unrelenting exercise in class superiority, and it will soon be as unendurable as a minstrel show. It is the calf-bound, gilt-edged bible of neoliberal meritocracy. The weirdest thing about it is that this dyed-in-the-wool conservative woman (she started her career at the National Review) somehow became the irreproachable darling of New York media and stayed that way for decades, all on the strength of a dry, self-regarding prose style and a “glamor shot” with a Corvette. The toast of Broadway and the face of Céline, decorated by Barack Obama himself, Didion is the mascot of the 20th century’s ruling class (both “liberal” and “conservative”)—that is, people who “went to a good school” and know how to ski and what kind of wine to order, and thus believe themselves entitled to be in charge of your life and mine, and just… planet Earth. Almost every college-educated person in the United States d’un certain âge (that’s the kind of phrase we liked to use) is to some degree responsible for this, insofar as we accepted it—or did, maybe, until 2016, when the failures of the “meritocracy” finally came home to roost. Or not roost, rather, so much as attack like we were Tippi Hedren.

https://popula.com/2018/10/15/the-center-held-just-fine/

xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 5 January 2022 17:24 (two years ago) link

“Trouble in Lakewood” is about ten thousand times better than “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”

A child wrote this sentence.

Max Hamburgers (Eric H.), Wednesday, 5 January 2022 17:28 (two years ago) link

i mean we all have our icons. i've spent a lot of time lately reevaluating mine, which becomes oversharing and/or overstepping too easily for me.

xp and that graph expresses it well. behind all of the well-observed detail is, frankly, a poor understanding of what motivates and animates people, beyond the quest for power. also, no offense to brad, but the quote above about the hills being a manifestations of stress is garbage imo, really reveals a fundamental lack of interest in what animates the earth beyond it being, again, a reflection of ms. didion's own anxiety.

xp ok, i will definitely pick on that shitty aristocratic myopic little style nitpick sniffing attitude, fuck that shit lol

Nedlene Grendel as Basenji Holmo (map), Wednesday, 5 January 2022 17:32 (two years ago) link

wow from mild to wild in one post. need to bow out of posting here obv, but i appreciate seeing critiques posted itt.

Nedlene Grendel as Basenji Holmo (map), Wednesday, 5 January 2022 17:43 (two years ago) link

One more essay on the inadequacies of Didion.

i got mad at this essay at the time because maria bustillos fucking sucks

STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Wednesday, 5 January 2022 17:56 (two years ago) link

the quote above about the hills being a manifestations of stress is garbage imo, really reveals a fundamental lack of interest in what animates the earth beyond it being, again, a reflection of ms. didion's own anxiety.

huh i thought it a well-poised analogy about thought vs. style but ok be an asshole

STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Wednesday, 5 January 2022 17:57 (two years ago) link

mute joan didion on twitter and fucking spare us

STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Wednesday, 5 January 2022 17:58 (two years ago) link

you've already decided how you feel about her and you're contorting her work to your decision, which is fine, we all do it, but it's like i can't even fucking appreciate how democracy is written

STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Wednesday, 5 January 2022 17:58 (two years ago) link


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