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Sentimental Journeys
Sentimental Journeys book paperback by Joan Didion
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
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About the author
Joan Didion
102 books17.1k followersJoan Didion was an American writer and journalist. She is considered one of the pioneers of New Journalism along with Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe.
Didion's career began in the 1950s after she won an essay contest sponsored by Vogue magazine. Over the course of her career, Didion wrote essays for many magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post, Life, Esquire, The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. Her writing during the 1960s through the late 1970s engaged audiences in the realities of the counterculture of the 1960s, the Hollywood lifestyle, and the history and culture of California. Didion's political writing in the 1980s and 1990s often concentrated on the subtext of political rhetoric and the United States's foreign policy in Latin America. In 1991, she wrote the earliest mainstream media article to suggest the Central Park Five had been wrongfully convicted. In 2005, Didion won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for The Year of Magical Thinking, a memoir of the year following the death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne. She later adapted the book into a play that premiered on Broadway in 2007. In 2013, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by president Barack Obama. Didion was profiled in the Netflix documentary The Center Will Not Hold, directed by her nephew Griffin Dunne, in 2017.
Didion's career began in the 1950s after she won an essay contest sponsored by Vogue magazine. Over the course of her career, Didion wrote essays for many magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post, Life, Esquire, The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. Her writing during the 1960s through the late 1970s engaged audiences in the realities of the counterculture of the 1960s, the Hollywood lifestyle, and the history and culture of California. Didion's political writing in the 1980s and 1990s often concentrated on the subtext of political rhetoric and the United States's foreign policy in Latin America. In 1991, she wrote the earliest mainstream media article to suggest the Central Park Five had been wrongfully convicted. In 2005, Didion won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for The Year of Magical Thinking, a memoir of the year following the death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne. She later adapted the book into a play that premiered on Broadway in 2007. In 2013, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by president Barack Obama. Didion was profiled in the Netflix documentary The Center Will Not Hold, directed by her nephew Griffin Dunne, in 2017.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 12, 2020
Das Buch versammelt einige journalistische Arbeiten von Joan Didion aus den achtziger und frühen neunziger Jahren. Zusammengenommen vermitteln die Artikel einen Eindruck von der inneren Verfasstheit der us-amerikanischen Gesellschaft. Allerdings ist es als Leser ohne intime Kenntnisse der lokalen Verhältnisse der damaligen Zeit, oft schwer den Überblick zu behalten. Es fallen u.a. viele Namen von Personen, die mir absolut unbekannt sind. Richtig gut sind die Texte, die allgemeiner gehalten sind. Insbesondere der letzte Teil über einen Vergewaltigungsfall in New York.
July 9, 2011
The title essay in this collection is about the Central Park Jogger case and that is why I read the book, but I found that the rest of it, though dated, provided some worthwhile reading. Didion always writes well and she does a fine job here of exploring the mood of New York City and how it contributed to the media frenzy the jogger crime induced.
The sentimental journeys she refers to are the “memories” of the city as it never was and the current feeling (in 1989) that crime was out of control and everything was in decline. There is a case to be made that all that was true at that time. She also explores the unspoken but ever-present white racism as many perceived it in the media discussion of the case and the trial.
Another essay, on the 1988 election, is of course dated in some ways but her astute observations on a presidential race apply to any political election these days. One example of the artificiality of campaigning: When Michael Dukakis (who was running against George H W Bush) addressed a crowd at one campaign stop the cameras couldn’t be set up to film him properly and so he made his speech with his back to the crowd. He made three short campaign stops: in a Puerto Rican neighborhood, a Jewish Hadassah meeting, and I forget the other. Not many people were at any of these stops and they were remarkably unenthusiastic. That wasn’t the point – the point was he had covered his constituent groups and got filmed for the evening news. His opponent conducted a similar campaign.
Didion also discusses Hawaiian real estate, an endlessly fascinating subject. Something like 15% of the land is owned by the US government, another 15% by the state, and of the remaining land 70% is owned by large estates, especially the Bishop estate. So “buying” a house in Honolulu actually means leasing land with a house on it. If the lease is long you’re fine, though “selling” it if you stay too long can be difficult. If the time remaining on the lease is short, the cost could quadruple on you. The author also describes a Vietnamese/ethnic Chinese camp in Hong Kong, the Patricia Hearst story, the nuclear facility at Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore Labs, earthquakes in California, and much more.
This book is particularly lovely to hold. It’s 5 ½ x 9 ½ inches and the paper is thick and a cream color. The cover is nondescript, alas.
2011
The sentimental journeys she refers to are the “memories” of the city as it never was and the current feeling (in 1989) that crime was out of control and everything was in decline. There is a case to be made that all that was true at that time. She also explores the unspoken but ever-present white racism as many perceived it in the media discussion of the case and the trial.
Another essay, on the 1988 election, is of course dated in some ways but her astute observations on a presidential race apply to any political election these days. One example of the artificiality of campaigning: When Michael Dukakis (who was running against George H W Bush) addressed a crowd at one campaign stop the cameras couldn’t be set up to film him properly and so he made his speech with his back to the crowd. He made three short campaign stops: in a Puerto Rican neighborhood, a Jewish Hadassah meeting, and I forget the other. Not many people were at any of these stops and they were remarkably unenthusiastic. That wasn’t the point – the point was he had covered his constituent groups and got filmed for the evening news. His opponent conducted a similar campaign.
Didion also discusses Hawaiian real estate, an endlessly fascinating subject. Something like 15% of the land is owned by the US government, another 15% by the state, and of the remaining land 70% is owned by large estates, especially the Bishop estate. So “buying” a house in Honolulu actually means leasing land with a house on it. If the lease is long you’re fine, though “selling” it if you stay too long can be difficult. If the time remaining on the lease is short, the cost could quadruple on you. The author also describes a Vietnamese/ethnic Chinese camp in Hong Kong, the Patricia Hearst story, the nuclear facility at Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore Labs, earthquakes in California, and much more.
This book is particularly lovely to hold. It’s 5 ½ x 9 ½ inches and the paper is thick and a cream color. The cover is nondescript, alas.
2011
March 2, 2018
I had to read this for my college credit course on a major author. So far, we have been reading selections from her essay anthology. Didion is a fascinating study in that she takes the modes of having character and discipline and applies them to the human condition--taking major historical events and showing how they parallel how a society or an individual (usually herself) feels about a certain issue. This is especially true for her earlier essays from when she was becoming a young adult and stuck between romanticizing her nostalgic past and realizing that she has grown as a person more than if situations had remained the same.
Sentimental Journeys is a fascinating study because Didion takes a journalistic approach to a deeper motif and study on what was going on in NYC in the late 1980's. The media portrayal of certain victims and the wrongfully accused are, of course, themes noticed in today's world. Ironically, Donald Trump insisted the young black men, with no physical or forensic evidence of having committed the crime, were guilty.
The jogger murder was an excuse to the people of NYC to cling to a story that represented the denied divide between social, political, racial, and economic lives in a place that survives on being the melting pot of America. But the very fact of that means there are and will be differences.
What I find most captivating about Didion is that the essays all carry the particular motif of being compared to a story or a narrative. The people of NYC sentimentalized their journeys of life in an effort to express what was really happening. And they used the jogger and her accused rapists to feed into their true feelings about the divides occurring.
I highly recommend this piece to people who are less interested in political standpoints (I have discovered at college that I am not liberal) but more interested in how media portrayal can influence how people use victimization and racism to reflect what is happening in a societal culture. This is especially helpful for writers to understand because these "stories" are so much more--life reflects art and vice versa. Understanding how the world works can help us not only become better writers, but comprehend why people are feeling certain ways and to stop the overtake of those with power.
Sentimental Journeys is a fascinating study because Didion takes a journalistic approach to a deeper motif and study on what was going on in NYC in the late 1980's. The media portrayal of certain victims and the wrongfully accused are, of course, themes noticed in today's world. Ironically, Donald Trump insisted the young black men, with no physical or forensic evidence of having committed the crime, were guilty.
The jogger murder was an excuse to the people of NYC to cling to a story that represented the denied divide between social, political, racial, and economic lives in a place that survives on being the melting pot of America. But the very fact of that means there are and will be differences.
What I find most captivating about Didion is that the essays all carry the particular motif of being compared to a story or a narrative. The people of NYC sentimentalized their journeys of life in an effort to express what was really happening. And they used the jogger and her accused rapists to feed into their true feelings about the divides occurring.
I highly recommend this piece to people who are less interested in political standpoints (I have discovered at college that I am not liberal) but more interested in how media portrayal can influence how people use victimization and racism to reflect what is happening in a societal culture. This is especially helpful for writers to understand because these "stories" are so much more--life reflects art and vice versa. Understanding how the world works can help us not only become better writers, but comprehend why people are feeling certain ways and to stop the overtake of those with power.
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October 17, 2021Said it before but nobody does it like Joan….
September 18, 2017
Couldn't really get into it.
August 6, 2021
Toller Schreibstil. Ein Genuss.
Read
August 7, 2024it was good, she integrates politics into the personal sphere and vice versa and it doesnt seem forced or preachy
September 20, 2025
No one does it better than Didion.
November 3, 2013
Wow. Genius.
June 25, 2015
Lots of political pieces and hard hitting journo pieces. Gritty read at times with lots of detailed information.
February 13, 2010
One of the great pieces of 20th century non-fiction: one city, one event, in one hundred pages.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews