Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Bothering hippies
interviewing white people
West Coast style smugness.

As amazing as Joan Didion is, I don't think this book has aged well, and I suspect I might have liked it better if I had read it two or three or four decades ago. As it is, it feels quaint, an artifact of modern journalistic history, and I was impatient for it to be over. It is possible that my frustration with the book was exacerbated by the horrible narration by Diane Keaton, but I don't think so.

One of my heroes. Second time through was even better.

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 that it did not matter that no one is terribly concerned with San Francisco and hippies any more.

Super enjoyable and readable - it lives up to the hype.

A good part of this collection just flew over my head. I did not have the energy to check all the references that only americans or californians or new yorkers and so on get.
Some essays just hit the right spot.
Incredible writing, of course.

I will be returning to it.