Slouching Towards Bethlehem

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.

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.