Joan Didion: Substance and Style

by Kathleen M Vandenberg

2022 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

Much acclaimed and often imitated, Joan Didion remains one of the leading American essayists and political journalists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The lone woman writer among the New Journalists in the 1960s and '70s, Didion became a powerful critic of public and political mythologies in the '80s and '90s, and was an inspiration for those, particularly women, dealing with aging and grief and loss in the early 2000s. An iconic figure, Didion is still much admired by readers, critics, and essayists, who speak of looking to her prose style as a model for their own. In Joan Substance and Style , Kathleen M. Vandenberg explores how Didion's nonfiction prose style, often lauded for its beauty and poetry, also works rhetorically. Through close readings of selected nonfiction from the last forty years-biographically, culturally, and politically situated-Vandenberg reveals how Didion deliberately and powerfully employs style to emphasize her point of view and enchant her readers. While Didion continues to publish and the "Cult of Joan," as one author calls it, grows seemingly stronger by the day, this book is the only extended treatment of Didion's later nonfiction and the first sustained and close consideration of how her essays work at the level of the sentence.

184 pages, Hardcover

Published February 1, 2021

Reviews

[Adeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read every Didion piece I could get my hands on yet have always failed at figuring out what it is exactly that makes her writing so... Didion-esque. Every time I start one of her books with the intention of cracking her code, I always end up too fascinated by her writing's layers, complexity and control to pay attention to the words themselves.

Substance and Style is like someone shaking me out of my Didion trance and analyzing text, down to the use of repetitions, figures of style and even commas. It's nerdy, academic and I loved it.

I also appreciated that Vandenberg doesn't tackle the books that have already been discussed at length -- although I would have loved to read her take on The White Album and Slouching Towards Bethlehem, these are already explored in Henderson's Joan Didion (which, btw, is super cheap on AbeBooks and worth a read). Instead Vandenberg focuses on Salvador (one I haven't seen discussed as much and which I find particularly memorable, both for the topic and style), Political Fictions, and The Year of Magical Thinking + Blue Nights (a personal favourite).

Substance and Style can read very dry at times, but is one I'll probably refer to again in the future. Where Daugherty's bibliography of Didion did a great job at placing her works in their context and Didion's own social and political beliefs, Vandenberg provides the excellent analysis that I'd been looking for ever since a I first read a Didion essay.

[SHBET - Thương Hiệu Cá Cược Uy Tín, Bảo Mật Cao · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cristiano Ronaldo tiếp tục phong độ ấn tượng khi ghi bàn giúp Bồ Đào Nha thắng Ba Lan 3-1 ở vòng bảng UEFA Nations League vào rạng sáng 13/10. Đây là bàn thắng thứ 11 của Ronaldo trong mùa giải và là bàn thứ 906 trong sự nghiệp. Bồ Đào Nha dẫn trước nhờ bàn của Bernardo Silva (phút 26) và Ronaldo (phút 37), và hưởng lợi từ pha phản lưới nhà của Jan Bednarek. Họ dẫn đầu bảng 1 với 9 điểm sau 3 trận.

Tây Ban Nha nhọc nhằn vượt qua Đan Mạch 1-0 nhờ pha vô lê của Martin Zubimendi (phút 79), vươn lên dẫn đầu bảng 4 với 7 điểm.
Xem thêm tại: https://starstreams.tv/

[FM Braying · Rating 3 out of 5]

fascinating connection Vandenberg makes between Didion's writing and cinematic language (editing)

[Daheelauren]

As exciting as literary criticism can be