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Beautifully repackaged as part of the Picador Modern Classics Series, this special edition is small enough to fit in your pocket and bold enough to stand out on your bookshelf.
Celebrated, iconic, and indispensable, Joan Didion's first work of nonfiction, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
, is considered a watershed moment in American writing. First published in 1968, the collection was critically praised as one of the "best prose written in this country."More than perhaps any other book, this collection by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era captures the unique time and place of Joan Didion's focus, exploring subjects such as John Wayne and Howard Hughes, growing up in California and the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, and, especially, the essence of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture. As Joyce Carol Oates remarked: "[Didion] has been an articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time, a memorable voice, partly eulogistic, partly despairing; always in control."
List of contents
CONTENTSI. Life Styles in the Golden Land
Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream
John Wayne: A Love Song
Where the Kissing Never Stops
Comrade Laski, C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.)
7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38
California Dreaming
Marrying Absurd
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
II. PersonalsOn Keeping a Notebook
On Self-Respect
I Can't Get That Monster Out of My Mind
On Morality
On Going Home
III. Seven Places of the MindNotes from a Native Daughter
Letter from Paradise, 21° 19' N., 157° 52' W
Rock of Ages
The Seacoast of Despair
Guaymas, Sonora
Los Angeles Notebook
Goodbye to All That
About the author
Joan Didion (1934-2021) was the National Book Award-winning author of many works of fiction and nonfiction. After earning a Bachelor's degree in English at the University of California, Berkeley, she started her literary career writing articles and essays for
Vogue,
Mademoiselle,
Life,
The Saturday Evening Post, and
National Review, establishing herself as a prominent member of the New Journalism movement. Her books include
The White Album,
Play It As It Lays, and
Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
Shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, Didion's revelatory memoir
The Year of Magical Thinking was adapted as a one-woman stage show starring Vanessa Redgrave on Broadway. She also wrote several screenplays with her husband John Gregory Dunne, including
Panic in Needle Park with Al Pacino, the second remake of
A Star is Born with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, and an adaptation of her own
Play It As It Lays with Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins.
