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After Henry: Essays
Incisive essays on Patty Hearst and Reagan, the Central Park jogger and the Santa Ana winds, from the New York Times–bestselling author of South and West.
In these eleven essays covering the national scene from Washington, DC; California; and New York, the acclaimed author of Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album “capture[s] the mood of America” and confirms her reputation as one of our sharpest and most trustworthy cultural observers (The New York Times).
Whether dissecting the 1988 presidential campaign, exploring the commercialization of a Hollywood murder, or reporting on the “sideshows” of foreign wars, Joan Didion proves that she is one of the premier essayists of the twentieth century, “an articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time” (Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times Book Review). Highlights include “In the Realm of the Fisher King,” a portrait of the White House under the stewardship of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, two “actors on location;” and “Girl of the Golden West,” a meditation on the Patty Hearst case that draws an unexpected and insightful parallel between the kidnapped heiress and the emigrants who settled California. “Sentimental Journeys” is a deeply felt study of New York media coverage of the brutal rape of a white investment banker in Central Park, a notorious crime that exposed the city’s racial and class fault lines.
Dedicated to Henry Robbins, Didion’s friend and editor from 1966 until his death in 1979, After Henry is an indispensable collection of “superior reporting and criticism” from a writer on whom we have relied for more than fifty years “to get the story straight” (Los Angeles Times).
In these eleven essays covering the national scene from Washington, DC; California; and New York, the acclaimed author of Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album “capture[s] the mood of America” and confirms her reputation as one of our sharpest and most trustworthy cultural observers (The New York Times).
Whether dissecting the 1988 presidential campaign, exploring the commercialization of a Hollywood murder, or reporting on the “sideshows” of foreign wars, Joan Didion proves that she is one of the premier essayists of the twentieth century, “an articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time” (Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times Book Review). Highlights include “In the Realm of the Fisher King,” a portrait of the White House under the stewardship of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, two “actors on location;” and “Girl of the Golden West,” a meditation on the Patty Hearst case that draws an unexpected and insightful parallel between the kidnapped heiress and the emigrants who settled California. “Sentimental Journeys” is a deeply felt study of New York media coverage of the brutal rape of a white investment banker in Central Park, a notorious crime that exposed the city’s racial and class fault lines.
Dedicated to Henry Robbins, Didion’s friend and editor from 1966 until his death in 1979, After Henry is an indispensable collection of “superior reporting and criticism” from a writer on whom we have relied for more than fifty years “to get the story straight” (Los Angeles Times).
320 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 1992
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About the author
Joan Didion
102 books17.3k 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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December 30, 2025
RESTA CON ME, NON TE NE ANDARE
Antony Gormley: Exposure (2010).
Hanno scelto uno strano titolo per l’edizione italiana. Quello originale è un semplice After Henry, dopo Henry: perché Henry è morto, ed Henry è stato un grande amico di Joan Didion e di suo marito John Dunne.
Amico prima ancora che editor.
Questa raccolta di saggi giornalistici, dono di una persona preziosa, è dedicata a lui, a Henry Robbins (e anche a Bret Easton Ellis).
Il campus di Berkeley dell’Università di California, dove Didion si è laureata nel 1956.
S’incontrarono per la prima volta nell’estate del 1966.
S’incontrarono a cena e restarono insieme fino alle tre del mattino, ridendo e bevendo, ubriacandosi di alcol e allegria.
Da allora, per tredici anni, fino a una mattina del luglio 1979, i coniugi Didion-Dunne e Henry Robbins si sentirono almeno una volta alla settimana, e, nonostante la distanza (loro in California, lui a New York) si raccontarono e condivisero tredici anni di vita.
Poi, in una mattina di luglio del 1979, Henry Robbins si accasciò sul pavimento della stazione della metropolitana della 14ma strada, e non si rialzò più. A 51 anni.
L’estremità a sud dell’isola di Manhattan, il financial district, Wall Street e il vuoto lasciato dalle Twin Towers.
Per come lo descrive Joan Didion, Henry Robbins era un editor che non aveva molto a che fare con titoli, frasi, modifiche: era quello che a lei scrittrice restituiva un’idea di sé, un’immagine di sé che le permetteva di restare sola e scrivere.
L’ultima volta che Joan Didion ed Henry Robbins si videro fu due mesi prima della morte di Henry, a Los Angeles: Henry passò a casa di Joan prima di andare a una festa di lavoro, e lei lo convinse a dare buca e restare a cena. Quella sera parlarono molto, ma, secondo Joan, quello che Henry voleva davvero trasmetterle era che poteva farcela anche senza di lui.
Ma lei non gli credette.
Downtown San Francisco visto da una finestra dello SFMOMA.
Resta con me, non te ne andare è il verso di una poesia di Delmore Schwartz, che poi continua così:
Trovare il giusto passo prima di invecchiare,
Camminare insieme sulla strada che scompare,
Come Chaplin e la sua sorella orfana.
È la quarta raccolta di reportage pubblicata in Italia (dopo “Verso Betlemme”, “The White Album” e “Miami”).
La scrittura sfumata, rarefatta, sfuggente, sfaccettata di Joan Didion trasforma in letteratura ogni appunto del suo taccuino, e compone un ritmo seducente, erotico.
La Statua della Libertà vista dal traghetto per Staten Island.
È diviso in tre parti: la prima è dedicata a Washington, e quindi a campagne elettorali presidenziali, alla politica che determina la Storia; l’ultima a New York, ed è un lungo saggio su un caso di stupro molto violento a Central Park (impossibile non pensare a “Lucky” di Alice Sebold) che diventa l’occasione per ragionare sulla violenza verso le donne, sui sogni e le bugie della Grande Mela, su come si crea l’illusione della sicurezza (e quella dell’insicurezza), su come nasce un parco, tra speculazioni immobiliari e domande di lavoro.
Quella centrale, e più corposa, è dedicata alla California: e per il tempo che ho passato in quella parte del mondo, e per come amo quel paese, è per forza di cose la mia sezione preferita di questa miscellanea.
Downtown Los Angeles.
Didion non regala certezze, e neppure opinioni facili: dona al lettore un’esperienza letteraria.
L’infanzia è il regno dove nessuno muore mai.
PS
Oltre il titolo, trovo sbagliata anche la copertina, semplicemente brutta.
Antony Gormley: Quantum Cloud VIII (1999).
Antony Gormley: Exposure (2010).
Hanno scelto uno strano titolo per l’edizione italiana. Quello originale è un semplice After Henry, dopo Henry: perché Henry è morto, ed Henry è stato un grande amico di Joan Didion e di suo marito John Dunne.
Amico prima ancora che editor.
Questa raccolta di saggi giornalistici, dono di una persona preziosa, è dedicata a lui, a Henry Robbins (e anche a Bret Easton Ellis).
Il campus di Berkeley dell’Università di California, dove Didion si è laureata nel 1956.
S’incontrarono per la prima volta nell’estate del 1966.
S’incontrarono a cena e restarono insieme fino alle tre del mattino, ridendo e bevendo, ubriacandosi di alcol e allegria.
Da allora, per tredici anni, fino a una mattina del luglio 1979, i coniugi Didion-Dunne e Henry Robbins si sentirono almeno una volta alla settimana, e, nonostante la distanza (loro in California, lui a New York) si raccontarono e condivisero tredici anni di vita.
Poi, in una mattina di luglio del 1979, Henry Robbins si accasciò sul pavimento della stazione della metropolitana della 14ma strada, e non si rialzò più. A 51 anni.
L’estremità a sud dell’isola di Manhattan, il financial district, Wall Street e il vuoto lasciato dalle Twin Towers.
Per come lo descrive Joan Didion, Henry Robbins era un editor che non aveva molto a che fare con titoli, frasi, modifiche: era quello che a lei scrittrice restituiva un’idea di sé, un’immagine di sé che le permetteva di restare sola e scrivere.
L’ultima volta che Joan Didion ed Henry Robbins si videro fu due mesi prima della morte di Henry, a Los Angeles: Henry passò a casa di Joan prima di andare a una festa di lavoro, e lei lo convinse a dare buca e restare a cena. Quella sera parlarono molto, ma, secondo Joan, quello che Henry voleva davvero trasmetterle era che poteva farcela anche senza di lui.
Ma lei non gli credette.
Downtown San Francisco visto da una finestra dello SFMOMA.
Resta con me, non te ne andare è il verso di una poesia di Delmore Schwartz, che poi continua così:
Trovare il giusto passo prima di invecchiare,
Camminare insieme sulla strada che scompare,
Come Chaplin e la sua sorella orfana.
È la quarta raccolta di reportage pubblicata in Italia (dopo “Verso Betlemme”, “The White Album” e “Miami”).
La scrittura sfumata, rarefatta, sfuggente, sfaccettata di Joan Didion trasforma in letteratura ogni appunto del suo taccuino, e compone un ritmo seducente, erotico.
La Statua della Libertà vista dal traghetto per Staten Island.
È diviso in tre parti: la prima è dedicata a Washington, e quindi a campagne elettorali presidenziali, alla politica che determina la Storia; l’ultima a New York, ed è un lungo saggio su un caso di stupro molto violento a Central Park (impossibile non pensare a “Lucky” di Alice Sebold) che diventa l’occasione per ragionare sulla violenza verso le donne, sui sogni e le bugie della Grande Mela, su come si crea l’illusione della sicurezza (e quella dell’insicurezza), su come nasce un parco, tra speculazioni immobiliari e domande di lavoro.
Quella centrale, e più corposa, è dedicata alla California: e per il tempo che ho passato in quella parte del mondo, e per come amo quel paese, è per forza di cose la mia sezione preferita di questa miscellanea.
Downtown Los Angeles.
Didion non regala certezze, e neppure opinioni facili: dona al lettore un’esperienza letteraria.
L’infanzia è il regno dove nessuno muore mai.
PS
Oltre il titolo, trovo sbagliata anche la copertina, semplicemente brutta.
Antony Gormley: Quantum Cloud VIII (1999).
June 21, 2017
A collection of essay's my Joan Didion, mostly centered around politics and social commentary. While I enjoyed the writing very much, Didion is so eloquent, I was bored during a good three fourths of the book. I think it's because I don't really care about what happened in the 80's while Reagan was president, though it was amusing to see that our current president isn't the only inadequate president we've had. I also don't live in LA so I didn't relate at all to the essays about the earth quakes and fires that break out. I did enjoy the last essay on the rape and assault that happened to a jogger in central park because it centered much more around the ideas of race and it felt more relevant even today. The parts of the book that were most interesting were things that were applicable or related to the current day and I had originally thought that the essays about Reagan had been included in the book to draw parallels with the current situation but I'm not so sure after looking at the description now. I do want to read more of Didion's writing now and I only bumped it up to four stars from three because I really like the way she writes. I think I would've liked it more if it didn't center around so much personal experience I do tend to hate memoirs because I'm self centered and other people's lives are boring. I basically had to force myself to read the ones about her growing up in the atomic age and about her experience in college.
January 8, 2016
"It'll blow a hole in your retina"
-- Joan Didion, "Pacific Distances" in 'After Henry'
"Writers are only rarely likable. They bring nothing to the party, leave their game at the typewriter. They fear their contribution to the general welfare to be evanescent..."
-- Joan Didion, 'After Henry'
Joan Didion is a prose knife fighter. God love whoever/whatever finds their slow side trapped in a corner, facing the pointy end of Didion's prose. She is especially talented in writing about place (especially California, Washington, Hawaii, New York, Los Angeles) politics, and people. But these are just the prose steps, the shifting geology, the temporary coordinates of her attacks. The thrust of her compressed prose is directed at narrative: the narrative of politics, the narrative of cities, city papers, journalists, actors, etc. She knows language and cliché and can smell Waimea bullshit from a busy "4+lib" near Brentwood Park. She is both gift and god. She is both bounty and blessing. She is both shake and tremor. It is obvious she loves things, but isn't afraid to pull the scab directly off the things she most loves. She doesn't have time for sentimental niceties. She ain't got time for you to bleed.
In the 80s she was maturing, but losing none of her grace and none of her excellence. These stories or narrative essays or whatever are all taken from her seasoned years (1979-1991) after her long-time editor Henry Robbins died (1979). They were written as evidence to herself that she could still write after he died, that she could 'do it without him.'
-- Joan Didion, "Pacific Distances" in 'After Henry'
"Writers are only rarely likable. They bring nothing to the party, leave their game at the typewriter. They fear their contribution to the general welfare to be evanescent..."
-- Joan Didion, 'After Henry'
Joan Didion is a prose knife fighter. God love whoever/whatever finds their slow side trapped in a corner, facing the pointy end of Didion's prose. She is especially talented in writing about place (especially California, Washington, Hawaii, New York, Los Angeles) politics, and people. But these are just the prose steps, the shifting geology, the temporary coordinates of her attacks. The thrust of her compressed prose is directed at narrative: the narrative of politics, the narrative of cities, city papers, journalists, actors, etc. She knows language and cliché and can smell Waimea bullshit from a busy "4+lib" near Brentwood Park. She is both gift and god. She is both bounty and blessing. She is both shake and tremor. It is obvious she loves things, but isn't afraid to pull the scab directly off the things she most loves. She doesn't have time for sentimental niceties. She ain't got time for you to bleed.
In the 80s she was maturing, but losing none of her grace and none of her excellence. These stories or narrative essays or whatever are all taken from her seasoned years (1979-1991) after her long-time editor Henry Robbins died (1979). They were written as evidence to herself that she could still write after he died, that she could 'do it without him.'
January 2, 2022
[3.5] Reading this collection is like time traveling back to the 1980s with a savvy, sharp-eyed guide. Most of the essays are focused on Los Angeles local politics and feel very dated - although still worth reading. Her essay "Sentimental Journey" about injustice and the Central Park jogger rape case, written years before new DNA evidence came to light, is brilliant.
October 4, 2021
Here is an older (50ish to 60ish), wiser and denser Joan Didion, really buckling down on the biggies: politics, especially, but also society and even race. "After Henry" is bookended by two of my favorite Didion pieces: The opening essay meaningfully explores the relationship between a writer and her editor; it's about where to go and how to write when your favorite editor is no longer there to catch you when you fall. "Sentimental Journeys," the last essay in "After Henry," is a reported analysis of the Central Park Jogger trials (the Trayvon Martin case of its time), with a deeper step-back about New York and its landmark green space.
The book is an important part of a trilogy beginning with "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" and continuing in "The White Album." People will always like her earlier stuff, but Didion really did get better with age and experience; we all do.
The book is an important part of a trilogy beginning with "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" and continuing in "The White Album." People will always like her earlier stuff, but Didion really did get better with age and experience; we all do.
April 8, 2023
Joan Didion's After Henry is a set of essays, the best of which are "in the Realm of the Fisher King" about the Reagan White House and "Sentimental Journeys" about crime in New York City, centering on the 1989 rape of a jogger in Central Park. I also enjoyed all the essays in the section entitled "California": I feel that the author understanding of the California scene is superior to that of any other writer, except perhaps Eve Babitz.
I find it interesting that most essay collections contain published book reviews, whereas Joan's do not. It is obvious that she is well read, but she doesn't appear to like writing about books.
I find it interesting that most essay collections contain published book reviews, whereas Joan's do not. It is obvious that she is well read, but she doesn't appear to like writing about books.
Read
January 4, 2022So this is Didion after her '60s/'70s peak years, by and large, dealing with the changing landscape of America and largely shifting her focus away from her native California. The pyrotechnics are fewer, the analysis is cooler, and the perceptions are sharp as ever, whatever she's writing about, whether that's politics as team sport, crime as spectacle, or the invisible lines of demarcation that separate out the various camps of the American 1 percent. I'm not sure why she named this After Henry -- that is the title of the first essay in the book, but it's also the title of the weakest and dullest essay. Go figure. After you've worshiped at the temples of The White Album and Slouching Towards Bethlehem, pick up After Henry.
August 23, 2022
Joan Didion’s sharp as a razor skills of observation cut to the heart of narratives . Narrative as cultural contracts silently written to construct shared life experiences are illustrated whether it be the ludicrous lives of the Reagan’s , Patty Hearst or the creation of New York’s Central Park as a symbol of corruption . Joan’s ability to nail the bs meter of life is incredibly profound . To read words so spot on to read them literally kicks the air from your lungs to where you have to pause and catch your breath.
The famed Reagan presidency a.k.a. reign is simplified through a mere act of ordering outrageously expensive presidential dinnerware layered in 24k gold the reason? The set in the White House already in existence did not have finger bowls . All this happening right under the sounds of hammers removing The Carter administrations solar panels on the roof . Ahhhh the 80s such a cartoon time .
The subject matter appealed to me because I have lived in most of the areas and time periods covered here . I see some of the other reviewers are not as fortunate and so it did not resonate .
For me Joan always resonates with me . A powerful force of writing that is like no other but perhaps James Baldwin . I hope to finish all of her books this year .
The famed Reagan presidency a.k.a. reign is simplified through a mere act of ordering outrageously expensive presidential dinnerware layered in 24k gold the reason? The set in the White House already in existence did not have finger bowls . All this happening right under the sounds of hammers removing The Carter administrations solar panels on the roof . Ahhhh the 80s such a cartoon time .
The subject matter appealed to me because I have lived in most of the areas and time periods covered here . I see some of the other reviewers are not as fortunate and so it did not resonate .
For me Joan always resonates with me . A powerful force of writing that is like no other but perhaps James Baldwin . I hope to finish all of her books this year .
April 7, 2019
The thing about Joan Didion’s supernaturally wonderful writing is that most often she writes about topics that don’t interest me… American politics and history. This essay collection was particularly focused on these topics, more so than her earlier nonfiction books, and so I only got through most of it on account of my wild admiration for Didion as a stylist and thinker (well, the two are symbiotic really…). Only 'After Henry' and 'Girl of the Golden West' essays held my attention because of their content too. I particularly missed Didion’s personal presence as the character-narrator that used to be more prominent in the earlier essays. I also felt that most of the works in this collection were quite outdated, whereas those in Slouching Towards Bethlehem and in White Album books feel more universal, more relevant today too. But the gems of individual sentences… the gems… For example: ‘Wyntoon [a private rural estate] had mists, and allusions to the infinite, great trunks of trees left to rot where they fell, a wild river, barbaric fireplaces.’
August 10, 2015
As we gear up for another season of Who's Going to be President, the essays here on politics are evermore poignant. And yet, who will read them that doesn't already agree? Didion's biggest weakness might be her perpetual lot of a saint preaching to the choir.
The essay "LA Noir" manages to be more interesting, mysterious, and entertaining than all of True Detective season 2 by about a million x. Good non-fiction is better than almost all fiction.
Didion can write journalistic pieces with a novelist's flair and somehow not come off as fake or covered in treacle. She does, however, rely more than a bit too much on parenthetical clauses, which may be why Bret Easton Ellis had to spend time on it with her editor. BEE... I see more and more how influenced he is by Didion, from the casual namedropping of celebs and big shots to the matter-of-fact recitations of violence. Still prefer JD.
Tons of good stuff. Even the less interesting essays are extremely readable.
The essay "LA Noir" manages to be more interesting, mysterious, and entertaining than all of True Detective season 2 by about a million x. Good non-fiction is better than almost all fiction.
Didion can write journalistic pieces with a novelist's flair and somehow not come off as fake or covered in treacle. She does, however, rely more than a bit too much on parenthetical clauses, which may be why Bret Easton Ellis had to spend time on it with her editor. BEE... I see more and more how influenced he is by Didion, from the casual namedropping of celebs and big shots to the matter-of-fact recitations of violence. Still prefer JD.
Tons of good stuff. Even the less interesting essays are extremely readable.
September 2, 2013
see, Joan Didion is not just a super smart robot who can see through all of you silly humans and your silly reasons and your silly way of going about doing the silly things you do... see, she has a heart too! here's the proof.
December 26, 2018
Joan REALLY doesn't like NYC.
January 27, 2025
J'avais très envie de retrouver Joan Didion et c'est chose faite. Son intelligence, la pertinence de ses mots, quelle plaisir !
J'ai lu les deux-tiers de cette collection d'essais, j'en parle sur mon blog. J'ai lu ceux consacrés à la Los Angeles, deux à la campagne présidentielle (nous sommes dans les années 80) et une qui a donné son titre au recueil écrite en hommage à son ami Henry. Et ce fut si touchant.
J'ai lu les deux-tiers de cette collection d'essais, j'en parle sur mon blog. J'ai lu ceux consacrés à la Los Angeles, deux à la campagne présidentielle (nous sommes dans les années 80) et une qui a donné son titre au recueil écrite en hommage à son ami Henry. Et ce fut si touchant.
May 14, 2023
Ormai essendo alla terza raccolta di saggi di Didion che commento in relativamente poco tempo, mi sento di ripetere quello che ho già commentato le altre volte.
È uno sguardo veramente molto tagliente e insolitamente preciso quello che mette a fuoco l'America nei suoi saggi. Dal presidente Regan alla moglie di Aaron Spelling (storia che mi ha fatto molto ridere, considerando che sono cresciuta a botte di Beverly Hills 90210, dove recitava la figlia Tori), dagli sceneggiatori precari (chi lo andava a dire alla Didion che nel 2007-2008 l'argomento sarebbe tornato di assoluta attualità) che alla fine sollevano questioni che potrebbero essere quelle di ogni giovane precario di oggi in altre realtà, al crimine e alle questioni razziali e a quelle climatiche (leggi: incendi in California).
Non c'è niente che non torni di attualità nelle tematiche scelte, segno del grande fiuto per le storie (o per la storia, forse) dell'autrice.
È uno sguardo veramente molto tagliente e insolitamente preciso quello che mette a fuoco l'America nei suoi saggi. Dal presidente Regan alla moglie di Aaron Spelling (storia che mi ha fatto molto ridere, considerando che sono cresciuta a botte di Beverly Hills 90210, dove recitava la figlia Tori), dagli sceneggiatori precari (chi lo andava a dire alla Didion che nel 2007-2008 l'argomento sarebbe tornato di assoluta attualità) che alla fine sollevano questioni che potrebbero essere quelle di ogni giovane precario di oggi in altre realtà, al crimine e alle questioni razziali e a quelle climatiche (leggi: incendi in California).
Non c'è niente che non torni di attualità nelle tematiche scelte, segno del grande fiuto per le storie (o per la storia, forse) dell'autrice.
November 22, 2023
READING VLOG
A fine collection of stories. What is there to do after the death of your husband but to look at where you come from? Spanning across Los Angeles and New York, Didion could write about the most mundane subject and I'd eat it up as if I was starved. She discussed currency exchange and I was floored by the music she incorporated into her language around numbers and symbols.
You really get a sense of where LA came from. You really get a sense of what New York was like. All in the late eighties. Money moved. People rioted. Over jobs. Over skin color. These essays show us that not much has changed from the America we know now. The spirit is still there. That trying and true longing that feeds the soil with the running blood of work ethic and politics that run cities dry of a light that beckons and beams in that hope that heaven projects.
A fine collection of stories. What is there to do after the death of your husband but to look at where you come from? Spanning across Los Angeles and New York, Didion could write about the most mundane subject and I'd eat it up as if I was starved. She discussed currency exchange and I was floored by the music she incorporated into her language around numbers and symbols.
You really get a sense of where LA came from. You really get a sense of what New York was like. All in the late eighties. Money moved. People rioted. Over jobs. Over skin color. These essays show us that not much has changed from the America we know now. The spirit is still there. That trying and true longing that feeds the soil with the running blood of work ethic and politics that run cities dry of a light that beckons and beams in that hope that heaven projects.
May 10, 2018
Sometimes laborious. Sometimes fascinating. Often too outside my wheelhouse to be personally meaningful. Still, a great look at events and politics that shaped my late childhood and early adult years.
October 4, 2021
“It occurred to me during the summer of 1988, in California and Atlanta and New Orleans, in the course of watching first the California primary and then the Democratic and Republican national conventions, that it had not been by accident that the people with whom I had preferred to spend time in high school had, on the whole, hung out in gas stations. They had not run for student body office. They had not gone to Yale or Swarthmore or DePauw, nor had they even applied. They had gotten drafted, gone through basic at Fort Ord. They had knocked up girls, and married them, had begun what they called the first night of the rest of their lives with a midnight drive to Carson City and a five-dollar ceremony performed by a justice still in his pajamas. They got jobs at the places that had laid off their uncles. They paid their bills or did not pay their bills, made down payments on tract houses, led lives on that social and economic edge referred to, in Washington and among those whose preferred locus is Washington, as “out there.” They were never destined to be, in other words, communicants in what we have come to call, when we want to indicate the traditional ways in which power is exchanged and the status quo maintained in the United States, “the process.”
Notes: One of the most peculiar things about Didion is that I sometimes don’t agree with her politics, but I almost always agree with her about ours. All political operatives, strategists, and hobbyists (categories of people, especially the latter, we should all strive to not be counted within) ought to read her account of the 1988 presidential election; her vision of an election that set a watermark for immateriality and featured all of the banal disconnections from reality that characterize our current political media environment is prophetic (narrative, horse race, set pieces, coverage focused entirely on the meta, and many other elements remain central), dispiriting (she understood how terrible all of this was 33 years ago, and yet here we are), and quaint (the 1988 election seems quite substantive compared to our current contests, where one party is formally policy-free) all at once.
Several individual pieces (I could read Didion on Los Angeles until the Golden State slides into the sea) easily rise to the level of those in her first two collections, but as a collection their comparative lack of cohesion adds up to a somewhat less sublime experience (though, to be clear, a “somewhat less sublime” book than Slouching and White Album is quite a remarkable book!).
Notes: One of the most peculiar things about Didion is that I sometimes don’t agree with her politics, but I almost always agree with her about ours. All political operatives, strategists, and hobbyists (categories of people, especially the latter, we should all strive to not be counted within) ought to read her account of the 1988 presidential election; her vision of an election that set a watermark for immateriality and featured all of the banal disconnections from reality that characterize our current political media environment is prophetic (narrative, horse race, set pieces, coverage focused entirely on the meta, and many other elements remain central), dispiriting (she understood how terrible all of this was 33 years ago, and yet here we are), and quaint (the 1988 election seems quite substantive compared to our current contests, where one party is formally policy-free) all at once.
Several individual pieces (I could read Didion on Los Angeles until the Golden State slides into the sea) easily rise to the level of those in her first two collections, but as a collection their comparative lack of cohesion adds up to a somewhat less sublime experience (though, to be clear, a “somewhat less sublime” book than Slouching and White Album is quite a remarkable book!).
December 21, 2020
Joan Didion is armed with a particular kind of x-ray vision — one that cuts through appearances, never fooled by the words being said or the explanation being given. It takes a certain breed of person, perhaps one that has been taught to distrust nearly everything and everyone, to bring the charismatic indifference and rigor she does to her political and cultural commentary.
After Henry is a worthwhile read, but much more focused on American politics and history than her other collections of non-fiction writing. There are certain gems in this book — the essays Insider Baseball, Shooters Inc., Sentimental Journeys — but at times difficult to get through if one is uninterested in the details of 80s politics. I would recommend Slouching Towards Bethlehem first, The White Album second, A Year of Magical Thinking third, and After Henry only for those who have at that point been thoroughly cast under the Didion spell.
After Henry is a worthwhile read, but much more focused on American politics and history than her other collections of non-fiction writing. There are certain gems in this book — the essays Insider Baseball, Shooters Inc., Sentimental Journeys — but at times difficult to get through if one is uninterested in the details of 80s politics. I would recommend Slouching Towards Bethlehem first, The White Album second, A Year of Magical Thinking third, and After Henry only for those who have at that point been thoroughly cast under the Didion spell.
February 5, 2024
In the cosmology of 1980s Joan Didion, LA is deluded, NYC is worse, and don't even mention DC. (Honest question: Who is the Joan Didion of Chicago?) This collection doesn't have the golden reputation of JD stalwarts like Slouching Toward Bethlehem and The White Album, and that's mostly fair. It's totally solid, if not always dazzling, work - which for Didion means it's head and shoulders above most writing ever, with some absolutely vertiginous and unhinged use of subordinate clauses. It does, also, contain "Insider Baseball," one of the all-time bangers of the American nonfiction canon, an essay I've read 3x time now and that still knocks me out and makes me embarrassed that I pay attention to legacy media political journalism.
September 29, 2024
Hard to rate this one, because "In the Realm of the Fisher King" and "Sentimental Journeys" are excellent, "After Henry" is sweet, "Girl of the Golden West" is good Didion, and the second section of "Pacific Distances" contains an extremely poignant passage that I'll return to, but there's also a lot that is forgettable in here about the real estate markets in Los Angeles and Hawaii in the 1980s. As an overall collection, I'd rate it lower than her earlier works, despite the real highlights.
January 30, 2021
voto: un tre scarso
Joan Didion mi era entrata nel cuore con "L'anno del pensiero magico" e mi ero, perciò, ripromessa di leggermi tutte le sue opere. Così ho preso in mano "Nel paese del Re pescatore" ed è stata una grande delusione (anche se probabilmente è da unicamente imputare al mio mancato interesse per i temi trattati).
La scrittura della Didion non è da mettere in discussione - rimane sempre sublime. Sono piuttosto gli argomenti che mi hanno suscitato solo una noia terribile.
L'opera è divisa in tre sezioni: "Washington" sui temi politici/presidenziali (molto scorrevole il primo scritto su Nancy Reagan), "California" su l'ononimo stato e LA, e "New York" su un caso di violenza avvenuto a Central Park come spunto per una riflessione più ampia (forse la sezione più interessante).
Consiglio, dunque, il libro solamente a chi vuole scoprire nei minimi dettagli il paese americano.
Joan Didion mi era entrata nel cuore con "L'anno del pensiero magico" e mi ero, perciò, ripromessa di leggermi tutte le sue opere. Così ho preso in mano "Nel paese del Re pescatore" ed è stata una grande delusione (anche se probabilmente è da unicamente imputare al mio mancato interesse per i temi trattati).
La scrittura della Didion non è da mettere in discussione - rimane sempre sublime. Sono piuttosto gli argomenti che mi hanno suscitato solo una noia terribile.
L'opera è divisa in tre sezioni: "Washington" sui temi politici/presidenziali (molto scorrevole il primo scritto su Nancy Reagan), "California" su l'ononimo stato e LA, e "New York" su un caso di violenza avvenuto a Central Park come spunto per una riflessione più ampia (forse la sezione più interessante).
Consiglio, dunque, il libro solamente a chi vuole scoprire nei minimi dettagli il paese americano.
December 8, 2024
This collection made me so homesick for a state that I don’t even like that much. Didion’s California feels at once foreign and so photographically accurate that even while reading this from Ohio, I can sense the familiar dry heat of the Santa Ana winds against my back.
If you decide read this, get ready to LAUGH and get ready to FEEL! And please do decide to read it...
If you decide read this, get ready to LAUGH and get ready to FEEL! And please do decide to read it...
September 17, 2024
I can never get enough of Joan Didion. An observer of both sides and a collector of facts and history.
May 5, 2025
I would pay a gabillion dollars to write with the intelligence and humble confidence that Joan never fails to bring. Little bit of everything for everyone in this one: Patty Hearst, Ronald Reagan, Central park jogger case, etc. One of her more underrated works for sure.
May 24, 2017
I received this book from NetGalley. I picked it because Joan Didion is on my book club list (The Year of Magical Thinking).
There were parts of this book that I really enjoyed - the California section and the New York section especially. I learned facts about each that I was not previously aware. The California section particularly because I lived outside Los Angeles for 28 years and remember a lot of what the author was writing about.
The thing that bothered me about this book was that I had to keep a dictionary beside me the whole time reading the book - made me feel a little dumb, but I learned new words! The author also writes LONG sentences using commas, semi-colons, and parenthesis abundantly. I was constantly having to reread and breaking down the sentences in order to absorb what she was saying.
There were parts of this book that I really enjoyed - the California section and the New York section especially. I learned facts about each that I was not previously aware. The California section particularly because I lived outside Los Angeles for 28 years and remember a lot of what the author was writing about.
The thing that bothered me about this book was that I had to keep a dictionary beside me the whole time reading the book - made me feel a little dumb, but I learned new words! The author also writes LONG sentences using commas, semi-colons, and parenthesis abundantly. I was constantly having to reread and breaking down the sentences in order to absorb what she was saying.
June 3, 2025
This was my 5th Didion book and by far my least favorite. The opening essay about Henry Robbins (Joan and her husband’s long term editor) was the only essay that really stuck with me. She says of Henry’s death, “there was only one person I wanted to talk to about it, and that one person was Henry” (16). This essay shows the heartbreak that accompanies loss and demonstrates Didion’s skill in describing human connection.
Unfortunately, this book contains many more essays, several of them particularly long winded and boring. She really gets into the weeds with essays about Reagan’s political campaigns in the early 1980s, real estate in LA, and crime in NYC. I found it hard to stay engaged for about 3/4 of this book (which is why it took me so long to read it). I don’t know that her political commentary is bad, but it lacks the spirit of her other work and (for me) fails to connect to the common human experience in a way that I’m used to seeing from her.
There were a couple essays that I found informative or that had glimpses of classic Didion “je ne sais quoi.” In “Pacific Distances” she says, “At nineteen I had wanted to write. At forty I still wanted to write, and nothing that had happened in the years between made me any more certain that I could” (118). That type of writing is what I’m used to from Didion and was saddened to find a lack of in this book.
Unfortunately, this book contains many more essays, several of them particularly long winded and boring. She really gets into the weeds with essays about Reagan’s political campaigns in the early 1980s, real estate in LA, and crime in NYC. I found it hard to stay engaged for about 3/4 of this book (which is why it took me so long to read it). I don’t know that her political commentary is bad, but it lacks the spirit of her other work and (for me) fails to connect to the common human experience in a way that I’m used to seeing from her.
There were a couple essays that I found informative or that had glimpses of classic Didion “je ne sais quoi.” In “Pacific Distances” she says, “At nineteen I had wanted to write. At forty I still wanted to write, and nothing that had happened in the years between made me any more certain that I could” (118). That type of writing is what I’m used to from Didion and was saddened to find a lack of in this book.
March 2, 2018
Contains some of the authors longer and denser works. prolly why it took 3 weeks to read. emphasized (or exacerbated depending on readers taste) some of her writerly tendencies. Also hit on many of her familiar themes (geographic psychologies of California, New York). My fav bits were her observations on news media, in the form of covering both specific events like pres election cycles and specific institutions like the LA times or NY papers.
My other favorite part about reading Didion besides the substance is imagining her face as she writes this or reads it aloud because she has such a distinct authorial personality. Her actual dominating presence in her text seems to contradict her reputation of unsentimental observational detachment but there she is looking through dark sunglasses with her California cool nerdy glamour lecturing me about sentimentality and lamenting (unsentimentally, coolly) the devolution of all things concrete into abstract narrative filler
My other favorite part about reading Didion besides the substance is imagining her face as she writes this or reads it aloud because she has such a distinct authorial personality. Her actual dominating presence in her text seems to contradict her reputation of unsentimental observational detachment but there she is looking through dark sunglasses with her California cool nerdy glamour lecturing me about sentimentality and lamenting (unsentimentally, coolly) the devolution of all things concrete into abstract narrative filler
May 29, 2018
I love Joan Didion and these are a mix of her essays from the late 80's / early 90's and are split between pieces on politics, LA, and then one on New York. Of course, given the dates some are just well, at this point, do I care (does anyone?) about the LA mayoral race in 1988? On the other hand, the distance of time makes some strike all the more. Her last essay on New York focuses on the case of the Central Park jogger and given what we now know, that the 'Central Park 5' were all actually innocent and basically coerced into confessions, her critique of the case and its handling (by police and perhaps even more so by the media) is made all the more trenchant.
January 7, 2023
The essays in this book were so specifically topical when they were written that they have become meaningless now. I struggled to recall the events they referred to even though I was aware of most of them when they occurred. I do remember the beating and rape of "The Central Park Jogger," because it was phenomenally mishandled, and I have not been able to read a book by Linda Fairstein years. She was one of the prosecutors who railroaded the young black men found guilty of the crime.
Mostly, this book is just too dated.
Mostly, this book is just too dated.
January 28, 2025
I understand why Didion’s early collections get so much attention (60s L.A. is so much sexier than Washington) but this collection gathers some of the best writing of her career. From her critiques of Reagan and the waning ambitions of daily papers to the unfortunately relevant “Fire Season,” so much of her insight has proved prescient. The final essay “Sentimental Journeys,” which examines the narrative forces undergirding the Central Park Five case is one of the greatest essays of all time.
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