Collected Essays: Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, and After Henry

by Joan Didion

Three essential works that redefined the art of journalism by “one of our sharpest and most trustworthy cultural observers” (The New York Times).   In these masterpieces of razor-sharp reportage, the National Book Award–winning and New York Times–bestselling author proves herself 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).  Slouching Towards America in the 1960s—a pivotal era of social change and generational divide. Here is Joan Didion on the “misplaced children” of Haight-Ashbury as well as John Wayne in Hollywood; folk singer Joan Baez and reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes; the extremes of both Death Valley and Las Vegas. Named to Time magazine’s list of the one hundred best and most influential nonfiction books, this is “a rare display of some of the best prose written today in this country” (The New York Times Book Review).  The White A New York Times bestseller, this landmark essay collection confronts the dark aftermath of the 1960s. From a jailhouse visit to Huey Newton, cofounder of the Black Panther Party, to a recording session with The Doors, from the culture of shopping malls to the contradictions of the women’s movement, Joan Didion captures the paranoia and absurdity of the era with irony and insight. And in the iconic title essay, she documents her uneasy state of mind during the years leading up to and following the Manson murders—a terrifying crime that, in her memory, surprised no one.  After Whether reporting on a Hollywood murder or the “sideshows” of foreign wars, Joan Didion crystalizes her reputation as a brilliant essayist. Highlights include a portrait of the White House under the Reagans, two “actors on location”; an unexpected meditation on the Patty Hearst case; and an exposé on the racial divisions and class fault lines of New York City following the rape of the Central Park jogger. An indispensable collection from a writer on whom we can rely “to get the story straight” (Los Angeles Times).

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Journalism, Classics, Ebooks

665 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 6, 2018

About the author

Joan 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.

Reviews

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I purchased this combined collection of her first three books of essays from Barnes & Noble for my Nook -- a pretty good deal for $15.

This was a weekend read for me. Joan Didion has an artist's eye combined with a psychologist's perception. These essays date from the 1960s to the late 1970s. They are oriented toward the west, and, in particular, California. They have a wistful, droll, and elegiac quality. At the time, especially in the 1960s, she was a young essayist and was attempting to get established as a novelist.

I recommend the book as a snapshot of life in California during a period of great activity and change. She strikes the reader as the quiet observer that takes in everything. The observations range from water needs in Los Angeles to the California governor's mansion in Sacramento. All in all, if you enjoy the particular form at hand -- the essay -- a book by one of the great ones.

[José · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written collection of essays but unfortunately, for me, mostly irrelevant for our time. Some social observations that are incisive, but these are too few to warrant a close look, at least for this reader.

[R. Frank Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joan Didion is among the great American writers and probably the best of the new journalists. Though I mourn her recent death, it was that sad news that inspired me to go back to reading her nonfiction. And find I am in awe. I write this even while disagreeing with some of her approaches and even her conclusions. Throughout these three books, she maintains her surgical view of events, pulling apart the subject at hand, reflecting the atomization of American lives and society, and demanding the reader look at these constituent facts without the "sentiment," magical thinking or narratives that hide the rot, corruption and lies underneath. Yes, she seems obsessed with rattlesnakes. Yes, she on occasion looks so deeply into the local picture, she ignores national forces at play. But look at her essay "In the Realm of the Fisher King," part of her collection After Henry. Picking apart the lies and staged events of American political speeches and campaigns, one begins to sense why a huge portion of this nation has rejected both political parties and government itself. And this she wrote in 1989. She saw it and she wrote it. It is not too late for us to find her truths again.

[Alayna Britt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought the ebook version for less than $2. These essays reflect the time in which the author lived out their adult life. Some of the views, comments, and words aren’t up to the modern standards but they show the main view of the time. She mainly shows the white upper middle class viewpoint from the 60s to the 80s. The viewpoints have a minor ignorance about them that minorities from these eras couldn’t afford to have.

[isabelle]

her syntax was so perfect it genuinely pisses me off

[Brett Reichel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed a different look into an era I was too young to remember, the 60's. The essay format was perfect for me. Very thoughtful, not dogmatic.