Joan Didion

these are some thoughts some people have

yeah sure, and that's actually a good way of putting it. hell, she certainly doesn't beat you over the head with any grand authorial voice. her prose is usually very unshowy, and she has a way of articulating the intuitive and even the banal but makes those thoughts fresh in a way that makes it seem like you are both in your head and out of it (or in the head of someone else that has these kind of banal though/connections and at the same time out of of that person's head). Her style is very Hemmingway (and by extension, Carver-esque) but she updates it in that the style reflects this condition that we all feel like we are living in a fiction/ dream that somehow doesn't line up with the fiction/dream that we see all around us, but still kind of does, or maybe we just still wish it did ... and this all makes us alienated from ourselves yadda yadda yadda .... so we "tell ourselves stories in order to live" in order to pinch ourselves and gain control and understanding and order but it never totally works so we keep doing it.

(And if Joan Didion were saying the above yammer she would do it much more effectively obv)

And her viewpoint is very American, very West Coast and I wonder how may people that are not so into her are not American and/or whether that makes a difference.

And for everyone who hasn't read her fiction, I would say pick up "Play It As It Lays" (very short and reads quickly too). Her fiction-writing style is also very cool and minimal and even reporterly, but also looser and plays up the dreamy haziness and it even has its experimental moments (one of her main things is switching between 1st and 3rd person).

in that "yeah I get it, so what the hell is so great a bout this" kind of way, but to me it's much more feminine

And maybe it is an American thing.

ha ha ... didn't mean to post those last two sentences

That is an interesting, suggestive-looking defence of Didion. Your sense of 'we are living in a fiction/ dream that somehow doesn't line up with the fiction/dream that we see all around us' seems to be quite true to an element of her work.

The idea that she is very American etc is interesting too, though I would like to hear what 'very West Coast' means in a writer. Perhaps English people say 'very Northern' and others don't know what it is supposed to mean; or perhaps they do know.

I didn't know I'd said she was unadventurous, but then it turned out I had. Of course the word doesn't matter much, or could be less precise than I wanted. Romeo says she's unshowy. That might be getting at the same thing. Certainly there are lots of ways of being a good writer. So, can a prose writer really be adventurous at all?

I thought about it, and I think I can name three who have been: James Joyce, Roland Barthes, Paul Morley -- all of whose writing has thrilled and moved me a good deal.

[btw I am English and on reflection I don't think I know what would be meant by 'very Northern', beyond differences in accents.

Probably only Stuart Maconie understands or credits this ontological divide]

I think that there's often an adventurousness to "unadventurousness," to prose characterized by its economy and seeming simplicity. Pinefox, stuff that you consider adventurous seems to be more maximal vs. the minimalness of Didion/Carver/Hemmingway (and his iceberg theory). Well, maximal certainly applies to Joyce and Pynchon (who you mention upthread). Barthes is pretty minimal for a cultural critic but I don't think he can be compared to Didion so well; two different projects. (I haven't read Morley, so no comment there). Funny that the 3 minimal authors I mention are all American (and even all-American .. ha). I don't think this style is necessarily American but it's probably more American than European and I really can't think of any British minimalists off the top of my head. Camus and Peter Handke would qualify as European minimalists I think.

As far as my "west coast" comment is concerned. There's definitely a kind of US west/east coast binary. It's really hard to get into that without making a lot of cringeworthy generalizations. And, unfortunately, California, and particularly LA/Hollywood are the big West Coast metonyms, and East Coast is often reduced to New York City and New England and the rest of both coasts are kind of different things that get left out and/or placed elsewhere. But anyways, West Coast ... long days, big vistas, highways, cars, movies, Manifest Destiny, gold rush and get-rich-quick, American Dream, the (obv bullshit) idea of American Utopia, deserts, sunshine, sexual freedom and transgression, anonymity (and making oneself new), and, later, counterculture and drugs ... that kind of thing ... and there's a disillusionment/aftermath to all that and it informs Didion's work. And, and this is I think what I was getting at really, I find Didion's style to be particularly West Coast in its spareness and imagery. I'm thinking mostly here of "Play It As It Lays" which is a Hollywood novel and has a lot of restless and purposeless highway driving and the alienation-from-self and fiction/dream thing I was talking about, and all of that isreflected in the style.

Of course, Pynchon is West Coast too ... so West Coast doesn't necessarily equal minimal.

And I think I only have a really vague idea of what "Northern" means, btw. I mean I guess there's, historically, the industrial and working-class-ness of some Northern cities, right? I dunno. Maybe someone can enlighten.

Didion's Where I Was From explicitly & at length explains how she is west coast. The character of California, the formation of what she'd call its character (I agree with her that there is a specifically Californian culture, an outlook; not that all who live there share it, necessarily, but that there is such a thing that informs and drives life there), has long obsessed her, and is almost always in play in her fiction. It has to do with property & water rights & a desire for comfort, an elevation of comfort as a sort of indication of grace -- it also has to do with a sort of preemptive alienation. That's like only a little of it, though - I went and got the book off the shelf, but I haven't read it in a while, and it's complex & elegant, I wouldn't want to just grab a good pull-quote. If the question "how is Didion a west coast writer?" is of interest to you, you should pick it up, anyway.

whenever I hear this chick's name I think she's actually a folk singer... man who am i thinking of...

preemptive alienation is exactly the vibe of didion's writing

Did she ever write horror? She has a good stylistic fit for it. (Maybe writing about the west coast is de facto horror ha!)

The bit I just read about seeing a Newport Beach high school team play against Costa Mesa in the 80s and getting beaten & the Newport kids chanting "Hey hey, that's OK, you're gonna work for us one day" counts as horror I think

I wish instead of a camera crew, MTV sent her and David Foster Wallace to document those "my super sweet 16" things.

Philip, I love you.

In general, I like her hundred-word sentences more than her five-word ones.

I've read *where I was from*. I was somewhat disappointed by it. I like the picture on the front of my copy.

I thought *play as it lays* was very poor, probably the worst Didion I've read.

I agree that adventure / unadventure looks like it plays out as maximal / minimal but I was somewhat trying to avoid that. Joyce is adventurous cos his style is (at times) flamboyant and expansive, yes, but also cos it changed so many times - that's truly an adventure, the Odyssey of style. Barthes also remade himself time and again - and his prose changed with it - but there is also a sense of reaching out in his prose, walking out on the tightrope if you like - which I suppose Morley shares. Morley also has daftness and namedropping, lots of things compacted together into a mix that people continually attack. (Another word that one wants to use is 'risk' in the writing, though again it might be approximate or even less helpful; none of these people was actually going to get hurt on account of their writing, save perhaps Joyce in a turbulent Europe.)

(reflection: when you set up any kind of principle ['I like un / adventurous writing'] it quickly becomes problematic in one way or another. In some ways I have come to suspect that the judgements we make are often about one writer at a time, sometimes even just one text, and not generalizable in the way we might think or want.)

It does seem that I am saying or concluding that writing in a minimal or plain way is likely to be relatively unadventurous, at the level of style. I think that's probably true. But it's true that plain writing can be good, for various purposes.

To corroborate that I don't like 'maxmimal' writing as such, I can recall that (to open another can of exploding sardines) I am largely on James Wood's side in the old hysterical realism debate. I don't think Pynchon's expansiveness necessarily makes for good fiction; Rushdie's makes for what feels to me like actively bad or at least deeply tiresome fiction.

Princess Tam Tam: Joan Baez? whose sister married Pynchon's best buddy at a wedding attended by Dylan?

(Joyce's first book of fiction was relatively very plain, indeed a model for plainness in the short story; moving beyond that was part of the adventure.)

(as I recollect it now, the effect of Didion's style in the *fiction* is not so much of plainness but more of mannerism - one which didn't come off for me. Perhaps there is a more genuine plainness in the non-fiction; which as I've often said, I think is better than the fiction of hers that I've read. But then perhaps I am the only one using the word 'plain' anyway.)

(Actually I come to think that 'mannerism' is a key word here, ie in some writers, sometimes, minimalism is not plain [as we might tend to assume it is] but mannered.

But talk of mannerism then I think raises the meta-question: why is mannerism bad? Some of us like some mannerisms in art. So again, articulating a general principle possibly doesn't get you very far.)

Ambrosia for Didion fans:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n06/david-thomson/what-does-a-snake-know-or-intend

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3144/2671216059_f49c822c86.jpg

I thought *play as it lays* was very poor, probably the worst Didion I've read.

Ha, well, yes, I think we're going to want to shake hands and agree that men of society are often found to differ in their tastes - I consider Play It As It Lays one of the definitive works of modern fiction, on par with any of the finest novels of the 20th century

yeah, nothing beats play it as it lays for me -- i read part of it years ago and didn't get it and finally went through the whole thing in one sitting during a horrible, much-delayed, overnight flight a few months ago and it left me feeling a bit like i'd just witnessed a murder or something.

among other things, it's maybe the best description of what it's like to be clinically depressed that i've ever read.

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5145/5561062104_fcabc806cd.jpg

mmm pizza

whoa that book-bench thing is sick as hell! i hate like... holding pages... down...

man you gotta respect the pinefox & I am saying this from the heart. he knows he does not dig Joan Didion, but he continues to engage her. this is what actually being into literature/writing is about imo, instead of the hedonism that seems most prevalent to me, the view of reading as pure pleasure-seeking. I don't think there's anything at all wrong with reading what you love (except insofar as Catholicism impels me to condemn any pleasure-seeking to some extent) but I think really engaging stuff that puts you off is the mark of an actual lover of words so my hat is off to the pinefox.

yeah pinefox is one of the best

that is not pizza, surely

i think it is a pancake, is there a thread where americans laugh at the british idea of what constitutes a pancake yet

It looks like a crepe!

crepe is just french for pancake imo

crepe w/ lemon + sugar for sure

Yes, it is a pancake, which I think is possibly identical to the French crepe with lemon and sugar.

I don't dislike the US version of pancake but on balance I think I prefer ours (or the French). But I am now finding it hard to remember just what the US version is like. One way that I don't agree with the Americans is that they eat pancakes with meat; I think pancakes should be sweet.

I am very surprised and touched by those who have complimented me on my reading as a result of my pancake image.

just wanna say how awesome it is that pinefox, when confronted with people complimenting him on his pizza when he is actually clearly eating a crepe, continues to engage with them. doesn't just say, what kind of pizza has lemon on it.

a little lemon is actually great on pizza

just gonna wait for this thread to become a five thousand post trainwreck in response to that, pretty sure ILX is built on pizza fascism

"cheese and lemon actually go together really well. like those snacks you'd have at parties as a child; a little hunk of cheese and a little cube of lemon on a cocktail stick"

We could ask our friend Joan.

I am writing this because I want to say that there are many flavours of pizza. I have experienced several of them, and while this is not without its interest, it is not what I wish to express here. I wish to say that a little lemon can be acceptable on a pizza. I discovered this at a pizza restaurant in San Francisco. This may not seem important, but it has continued to seem important to me. I have been trying to understand why this should be so for the last twenty-two years, but I am not sure that I am any closer to the answer.

You made that up.

actually will be kinda bummed if interesting author discussion gets tabled for jokes

I think pastiche is a form of understanding.

http://maxsilvestri.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/pancakeonstick.jpg

stick it

actually will be kinda bummed if interesting author discussion gets tabled for jokes

― five gone cats from Boston (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Saturday, March 26, 2011 5:02 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Just got another Didion book in the mail actually. "The Book of Common Prayer." Probably won't be able to get to it for a few months though.

Give it a couple of decades.

I am writing this because I want to say that there are many flavours of pizza...

I just want to say how awesome this parody was, esp "a pizza restaurant in San Francisco".

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1979/oct/11/theyll-take-manhattan-3/

I found this rather brutal attack on Didion to be interesting and persuasive, even though I still mildly enjoy some of Didion's writing... I absolutly LOVE Harrison's writing since discovering this essay...

http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/103/didion-per-harrison.html

yeah thats talked abt upthread iirc

there's a bit of unfairness and misreading inherent in any hatchet job. didion herself once wrote a piece on woody allen's 'manhattan' that was just as unfair as the harrison piece. that essay is good at ridiculing didion's writing style and making fun of her as a person in a quasi-witty way (i guess -- i didn't actually find it funny), viz a viz:

Didion is like a latter-day Scarlett O'Hara: she will think about whatever it is she thinks about tomorrow when she dabbles her toes in her pool, all the while calling attention beguilingly to the hairshirt she has fashioned for herself . . . which may explain why so many male critics find her adorable.

but when i read something that drenched in self-regard, i feel like i'm learning more about the writer than the subject.

Can anyone find me a quote from Slouching? I can't find my copy. I think it's toward the beginning of the title essay and the basic thrust is that the pre-hippie generation was conformist and career-minded not because they were blindly accepting but because they were skeptical about alternatives.

but when i read something that drenched in self-regard