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Let Me Tell You What I Mean
Bringing together twelve prescient pieces from the earlier part of the iconic writer’s career, Let Me Tell You What I Mean invites the reader on a journey across America's cultural and political landscape through Didion’s visionary gaze.
Twelve early pieces never before collected that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of Joan Didion.
Mostly drawn from the earliest part of her astonishing five-decade career, the wide-ranging pieces in this collection include Didion writing about a Gamblers Anonymous meeting, a visit to San Simeon, and a reunion of WWII veterans in Las Vegas, and about topics ranging from Nancy Reagan to Robert Mapplethorpe to Martha Stewart.
Here are subjects Didion has long written about - the press, politics, California robber baronsac, women, the act of writing, and her own self-doubt. Each piece is classic Didion: incisive and, in new light, stunningly prescient.
Twelve early pieces never before collected that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of Joan Didion.
Mostly drawn from the earliest part of her astonishing five-decade career, the wide-ranging pieces in this collection include Didion writing about a Gamblers Anonymous meeting, a visit to San Simeon, and a reunion of WWII veterans in Las Vegas, and about topics ranging from Nancy Reagan to Robert Mapplethorpe to Martha Stewart.
Here are subjects Didion has long written about - the press, politics, California robber baronsac, women, the act of writing, and her own self-doubt. Each piece is classic Didion: incisive and, in new light, stunningly prescient.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 26, 2021
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About the author
Joan Didion
101 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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April 22, 2022
Joan Didion: Why I Write
Of course I stole the title for this talk, from George Orwell. One reason I stole it was that I like the sound of the words: Why I Write. There you have three short unambiguous words that share a sound, and the sound they share is this:
I
I
I
In many ways, writing is the art of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying “listen to me, see it my way, change your mind.” It’s an aggressive, even a hostile act. You can disguise its aggressiveness all you want with veils of subordinate clauses and qualifiers and tentative subjunctives, with ellipses and evasions – with the whole manner of intimating rather than claiming, of alluding rather than stating – but there’s no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer’s sensibility on the reader’s most private space. I stole the title not only because the words sounded right but because they seemed to sum up, in a no-nonsense way, all I have to tell you.
So there, let’s say it in a no-nonsense way: Didion is not an acquired taste. Either you are taken with her from the start or you decide that she’s not for you and move on. Her sentences do not get better or different with time, neither do her themes. She retains a tone and attitude that either resonates with you or not. She writes non-fiction that, for the most part, reads like fiction. I didn’t come up with this – although I wish I had; Hilton Als did, the writer of the foreword of this latest collection of older essays. Whatever fiction is to be found in her writing is not direct, hungry for your attention, eager to adapt to traditional structure so as to cater to all kinds of reading tastes (he didn’t say this, I do.) Rather, it’s hidden, insinuated, glimpsed behind sentences that appear to be casually constructed; the more you read her, the more you realize how laborious her idiom is, how much she has pondered over each and every word. You only have to see how reverentially she dissects the first paragraph of Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms”, in essay no 11, to understand how hard she works on her own syntax.
That is what’s so cool about her style (and I’m not only talking about her writing here): her deceptive effortlessness. Much has been said about her aloofness, her detachment, a certain apathy that runs through her work. Aloofness is defined in my dictionary in a number of ways. One of them is: The quality or state of lacking curiosity. That, she isn’t. And an other: A state of preoccupation. That, she definitely is.
Again, it’s a matter of taste; I’m attracted to her alleged dispassion because it counterbalances my own sentimentality. I’ve learned not to question her involvement; she is involved, she always is, she just doesn’t throw it in your face, along with her judgment. She observes, she reports, she doesn’t explain. But she certainly paints the picture she set out to paint. Read “Pretty Nancy” (Reagan, wife of the then-governor of California), essay no 5, and see for yourselves how eloquent her impartial gaze at the Nancy-meets-the-press scene is.
Twelve previously uncollected pieces of her work here, written from 1968 to 2000. Truth be told, they are not always distinctly connected. Their subjects range from San Simeon (Randolph Hearst’s personal Xanadu), …an imaginative idea that affected me, shaped my own imagination in the way that all children are shaped by the actual and emotional geography of the place in which they grow up… to a 1968 Las Vegas reunion of WWII veterans ( Perhaps it was hard to bring quite the same urgency to holding a position in a Vietnamese village or two that they had brought to liberating Europe.) From Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs ( There was always in his work the tension, even the struggle, between light and dark. There was the exaltation of powerlessness.) to what Martha Stewart’s success represented at the time essay no 12 was written in 2000 ( This is getting out of the house with a vengeance, and on your own terms, the secret dream of any woman who has ever made a success of a PTA cake sale.)
The best, for me, are those concerning the craft of writing (specifically) and the process of creating something from nothing (in general). “Nothing” applying to the ideas and pictures in the artist’s head. Was I interested in all of the topics? No, not especially. But it’s not the themes; it’s the writing that fascinates me and in the end manages to engage me in the subjects themselves. Of the twelve, three left me cold and all the rest appealed to me in various degrees. Not a bad count at all.
If only for the two essays on the craft of writing, “Why I Write” and “Telling Stories”, this is worth reading. I opened the review with an excerpt from the former. I think I’ll close with one, decidedly longer, from the latter. If you aren’t convinced, sample and evaluate. Or skip it altogether. Otherwise, enjoy:
Short stories demand a certain awareness of one’s own intentions, a certain narrowing of the focus. Let me give you an example. One morning in 1975 I found myself aboard the 8:45 a.m. Pan American from Los Angeles to Honolulu. There were, before take off from Los Angeles, “mechanical difficulties”, and a half hour delay. During this delay the stewardesses served coffee and orange juice and two children played tag in the aisles and, somewhere behind me, a man began screaming at a woman who seemed to be his wife. I say that the woman seemed to be his wife only because the tone of his invective sounded practiced, although the only words I heard clearly were these: “You are driving me to murder”. After a moment I was aware of the door to the plane being opened a few rows behind me, and of the man rushing off. There were many Pan American employees rushing on and off then, and considerable confusion. I do not know whether the man reboarded the plane before take-off or whether the woman went on to Honolulu alone, but I thought about it all the way across the Pacific. I thought about it while I was drinking a sherry on the rocks and I thought about it during lunch and I was still thinking about it when the first of the Hawaiian Islands appeared off the left wingtip. It was not until we had passed Diamond Head and were coming in low over the reef for landing at Honolulu, however, that I realized what I most disliked about this incident: I disliked it because it had the aspect of a short story, one of those “little epiphany” or “window on the world” stories, one of those stories in which the main character glimpses a crisis in a stranger’s life – a woman weeping in a tea room, quite often, or an accident seen from the window of a train, “tea rooms” and “trains” still being fixtures of short stories although not of real life – and is moved to see his or her own life in a new light. Again, my dislike was a case of needing room in which to play with what I did not understand. I was not going to Honolulu because I wanted to see life reduced to a short story. I was going to Honolulu because I wanted to see life expanded to a novel, and I still do. I wanted not a window on the world but the world itself. I wanted everything in the picture. I wanted room for flowers, and reef fish, and people who might or might not have been driving one another to murder but in any case were not impelled, by the demands of narrative convention, to say so out loud on the 8:45 a.m. Pan American from los Angeles to Honolulu.
1978
December 24, 2021 edit:
https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/st...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/23/bo...
https://www.vogue.com/article/joan-di...
So here I am on Christmas Eve of this wretched year, in the middle of a cooking frenzy for tomorrow's family get-together and a friend whom I have 'converted' to Didion's writing just sent me the news of her death. I am so very sorry. Cooking can wait for a while. I'm reading the articles, a small tribute to an author I greatly admire and am glad I can sort of share the moment here on GR.
May she rest in peace - finally.
Of course I stole the title for this talk, from George Orwell. One reason I stole it was that I like the sound of the words: Why I Write. There you have three short unambiguous words that share a sound, and the sound they share is this:
I
I
I
In many ways, writing is the art of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying “listen to me, see it my way, change your mind.” It’s an aggressive, even a hostile act. You can disguise its aggressiveness all you want with veils of subordinate clauses and qualifiers and tentative subjunctives, with ellipses and evasions – with the whole manner of intimating rather than claiming, of alluding rather than stating – but there’s no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer’s sensibility on the reader’s most private space. I stole the title not only because the words sounded right but because they seemed to sum up, in a no-nonsense way, all I have to tell you.
So there, let’s say it in a no-nonsense way: Didion is not an acquired taste. Either you are taken with her from the start or you decide that she’s not for you and move on. Her sentences do not get better or different with time, neither do her themes. She retains a tone and attitude that either resonates with you or not. She writes non-fiction that, for the most part, reads like fiction. I didn’t come up with this – although I wish I had; Hilton Als did, the writer of the foreword of this latest collection of older essays. Whatever fiction is to be found in her writing is not direct, hungry for your attention, eager to adapt to traditional structure so as to cater to all kinds of reading tastes (he didn’t say this, I do.) Rather, it’s hidden, insinuated, glimpsed behind sentences that appear to be casually constructed; the more you read her, the more you realize how laborious her idiom is, how much she has pondered over each and every word. You only have to see how reverentially she dissects the first paragraph of Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms”, in essay no 11, to understand how hard she works on her own syntax.
That is what’s so cool about her style (and I’m not only talking about her writing here): her deceptive effortlessness. Much has been said about her aloofness, her detachment, a certain apathy that runs through her work. Aloofness is defined in my dictionary in a number of ways. One of them is: The quality or state of lacking curiosity. That, she isn’t. And an other: A state of preoccupation. That, she definitely is.
Again, it’s a matter of taste; I’m attracted to her alleged dispassion because it counterbalances my own sentimentality. I’ve learned not to question her involvement; she is involved, she always is, she just doesn’t throw it in your face, along with her judgment. She observes, she reports, she doesn’t explain. But she certainly paints the picture she set out to paint. Read “Pretty Nancy” (Reagan, wife of the then-governor of California), essay no 5, and see for yourselves how eloquent her impartial gaze at the Nancy-meets-the-press scene is.
Twelve previously uncollected pieces of her work here, written from 1968 to 2000. Truth be told, they are not always distinctly connected. Their subjects range from San Simeon (Randolph Hearst’s personal Xanadu), …an imaginative idea that affected me, shaped my own imagination in the way that all children are shaped by the actual and emotional geography of the place in which they grow up… to a 1968 Las Vegas reunion of WWII veterans ( Perhaps it was hard to bring quite the same urgency to holding a position in a Vietnamese village or two that they had brought to liberating Europe.) From Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs ( There was always in his work the tension, even the struggle, between light and dark. There was the exaltation of powerlessness.) to what Martha Stewart’s success represented at the time essay no 12 was written in 2000 ( This is getting out of the house with a vengeance, and on your own terms, the secret dream of any woman who has ever made a success of a PTA cake sale.)
The best, for me, are those concerning the craft of writing (specifically) and the process of creating something from nothing (in general). “Nothing” applying to the ideas and pictures in the artist’s head. Was I interested in all of the topics? No, not especially. But it’s not the themes; it’s the writing that fascinates me and in the end manages to engage me in the subjects themselves. Of the twelve, three left me cold and all the rest appealed to me in various degrees. Not a bad count at all.
If only for the two essays on the craft of writing, “Why I Write” and “Telling Stories”, this is worth reading. I opened the review with an excerpt from the former. I think I’ll close with one, decidedly longer, from the latter. If you aren’t convinced, sample and evaluate. Or skip it altogether. Otherwise, enjoy:
Short stories demand a certain awareness of one’s own intentions, a certain narrowing of the focus. Let me give you an example. One morning in 1975 I found myself aboard the 8:45 a.m. Pan American from Los Angeles to Honolulu. There were, before take off from Los Angeles, “mechanical difficulties”, and a half hour delay. During this delay the stewardesses served coffee and orange juice and two children played tag in the aisles and, somewhere behind me, a man began screaming at a woman who seemed to be his wife. I say that the woman seemed to be his wife only because the tone of his invective sounded practiced, although the only words I heard clearly were these: “You are driving me to murder”. After a moment I was aware of the door to the plane being opened a few rows behind me, and of the man rushing off. There were many Pan American employees rushing on and off then, and considerable confusion. I do not know whether the man reboarded the plane before take-off or whether the woman went on to Honolulu alone, but I thought about it all the way across the Pacific. I thought about it while I was drinking a sherry on the rocks and I thought about it during lunch and I was still thinking about it when the first of the Hawaiian Islands appeared off the left wingtip. It was not until we had passed Diamond Head and were coming in low over the reef for landing at Honolulu, however, that I realized what I most disliked about this incident: I disliked it because it had the aspect of a short story, one of those “little epiphany” or “window on the world” stories, one of those stories in which the main character glimpses a crisis in a stranger’s life – a woman weeping in a tea room, quite often, or an accident seen from the window of a train, “tea rooms” and “trains” still being fixtures of short stories although not of real life – and is moved to see his or her own life in a new light. Again, my dislike was a case of needing room in which to play with what I did not understand. I was not going to Honolulu because I wanted to see life reduced to a short story. I was going to Honolulu because I wanted to see life expanded to a novel, and I still do. I wanted not a window on the world but the world itself. I wanted everything in the picture. I wanted room for flowers, and reef fish, and people who might or might not have been driving one another to murder but in any case were not impelled, by the demands of narrative convention, to say so out loud on the 8:45 a.m. Pan American from los Angeles to Honolulu.
1978
December 24, 2021 edit:
https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/st...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/23/bo...
https://www.vogue.com/article/joan-di...
So here I am on Christmas Eve of this wretched year, in the middle of a cooking frenzy for tomorrow's family get-together and a friend whom I have 'converted' to Didion's writing just sent me the news of her death. I am so very sorry. Cooking can wait for a while. I'm reading the articles, a small tribute to an author I greatly admire and am glad I can sort of share the moment here on GR.
May she rest in peace - finally.
Want to read
November 8, 2024whatever joan wants to tell me, i'm interested
March 23, 2025
At this point, Joan Didion doesn't need my stamp of approval or anyone's, but I'm happy to say this collection did not disappoint. Of course, what distinguishes Let Me Tell You What I Mean (and her previous book, South and West) from her earlier collections is that, although these pieces are mostly decades old, they've been chosen with an eye toward what would still resonate now. Don't get me wrong: most of the essays in Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album still resonate, but it's inevitable that each of those collections contains some pieces that read as dated today. Not really the case here, although some of the earliest, shortest ones did feel a little slight. My favorites were her essays on writing, the lovely piece on Hemingway, and the incisive look at Martha Stewart's enterprise. Really my only gripe is that this book is tiny; I suspect Didion's publisher has a few similar volumes up their sleeve and is parceling the work out accordingly. But let's not kid ourselves—when those volumes come out we're gonna buy them and read them and be grateful for them, as well we should.
P.S. When I read The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free earlier this year, I learned that Didion had written an article about one of Helen Gurley Brown's early book tours, and I hoped it would appear in this collection. It doesn't, but it's available free online and it's just as fun and biting as you'd expect—an early precursor to the Martha Stewart piece. Read it here: https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2...
P.S. When I read The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free earlier this year, I learned that Didion had written an article about one of Helen Gurley Brown's early book tours, and I hoped it would appear in this collection. It doesn't, but it's available free online and it's just as fun and biting as you'd expect—an early precursor to the Martha Stewart piece. Read it here: https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2...
June 27, 2022
This was a such pleasant surprise for me. I wasn’t expecting to be so fascinated by her topics or mesmerised by her writing but I was. I’ve only read one of her books before this and now I’m thinking of reading more.
March 28, 2021
3.5
Hog heaven for Didion fans
Didion fans will be in hog heaven with this set of essays, some first published in the 1960s and 1970s. It’s a small book and a fast read, in case you want to squeeze it in (i.e., meanly push something else out). Didion and California go together, and I always feel like the flow-y, rich lifestyle, culture, and landscape of the state are in my face, but in a good way.
I’m really torn about this book and had trouble figuring out whether to give it 3 or 4 stars. I settled on 3 stars because not enough essays interested me. The good ones were really good, though. I completely loved the personal essays, which covered getting into college, attending a Gambler’s Anonymous meeting, creating short stories, and the writing process (the “Why I Write” essay is fantastic, and my favorite). Didion is very analytical, especially when it comes to talking about writing—she even talks about word choices and editorial decisions. And she’s wise and philosophical.
I thought the pieces on Nancy Reagan, Martha Stewart, and the Hearst mansion were (just) okay, but I was less interested in the remaining essays, including one on Hemingway, which I do think will be a favorite among his fans. If I had more interest in the people she chose to write about, I would have been more engaged. Sometimes she’s too academic though she swears she’s not intellectual. I beg to differ.
I have fond memories of reading her book of essays called Slouching Toward Bethlehem (cool title) back in my tissue-box-sized apartment in Cambridge in the 1970s. I remember looking at the paperback (with its enticing orange cover) on my bookcase, which I could reach from any point in my room. Back then I also read one or two of her novels, enjoyable but with no lasting impressions. Forty years later, I loved The Year of Magical Thinking, a sad and intense memoir. I think that’s my favorite.
Didion has a unique voice. I must admit that sometimes she bores me, but more often she seduces me with her brilliant prose. She’s one of our dear, smart, West Coast literary commentators. I picture her with a drink in her hand, sitting at her typewriter, concentrating hard and furiously writing away. Then, still with her drink in hand, she heads for the deck, needing to soak up some California sun.
Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy.
Hog heaven for Didion fans
Didion fans will be in hog heaven with this set of essays, some first published in the 1960s and 1970s. It’s a small book and a fast read, in case you want to squeeze it in (i.e., meanly push something else out). Didion and California go together, and I always feel like the flow-y, rich lifestyle, culture, and landscape of the state are in my face, but in a good way.
I’m really torn about this book and had trouble figuring out whether to give it 3 or 4 stars. I settled on 3 stars because not enough essays interested me. The good ones were really good, though. I completely loved the personal essays, which covered getting into college, attending a Gambler’s Anonymous meeting, creating short stories, and the writing process (the “Why I Write” essay is fantastic, and my favorite). Didion is very analytical, especially when it comes to talking about writing—she even talks about word choices and editorial decisions. And she’s wise and philosophical.
I thought the pieces on Nancy Reagan, Martha Stewart, and the Hearst mansion were (just) okay, but I was less interested in the remaining essays, including one on Hemingway, which I do think will be a favorite among his fans. If I had more interest in the people she chose to write about, I would have been more engaged. Sometimes she’s too academic though she swears she’s not intellectual. I beg to differ.
I have fond memories of reading her book of essays called Slouching Toward Bethlehem (cool title) back in my tissue-box-sized apartment in Cambridge in the 1970s. I remember looking at the paperback (with its enticing orange cover) on my bookcase, which I could reach from any point in my room. Back then I also read one or two of her novels, enjoyable but with no lasting impressions. Forty years later, I loved The Year of Magical Thinking, a sad and intense memoir. I think that’s my favorite.
Didion has a unique voice. I must admit that sometimes she bores me, but more often she seduces me with her brilliant prose. She’s one of our dear, smart, West Coast literary commentators. I picture her with a drink in her hand, sitting at her typewriter, concentrating hard and furiously writing away. Then, still with her drink in hand, she heads for the deck, needing to soak up some California sun.
Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy.
February 26, 2021
I have always had an appreciation for Didion's style, and often a dislike for her subjects. She is an incredibly talented writer who often writes about an incredibly uninteresting life of privilege in what feels like a distant age.
This is a disparate and short collection of Didion's writings that has an editorial mood of an older writer cleaning out her file cabinet. There are one or two good essays, but mostly stuff that seems not to have made it into other collections.
This is a disparate and short collection of Didion's writings that has an editorial mood of an older writer cleaning out her file cabinet. There are one or two good essays, but mostly stuff that seems not to have made it into other collections.
February 28, 2021
Let Me Tell You What I Mean was an anthology of essays written by Joan Didion from 1968 through 2000 that just kept me enthralled with her beautiful writing where she addresses the sweep from the mythical 1960s to the country's reaction to the events of September 11, 2001. Her writing is not only the lovely and poignant prose but searing words to the truth. I am looking forward to reading more of her works.
In the words of Hilton Als in the Foreword to the book I read and dated July 2020:
There were so many riveting and thought-provoking essays about so many subjects. One of the most poignant was the essay, Fathers, Sons, Screaming Eagles. Didion was in Las Vegas in 1968 interviewing a man in his early forties who had been at Bastogne in 1944 with the 101st Airborne Division and there for their twenty-third annual reunion. His son was missing in action in the Vietnam War and there were the contrasts to that military action and World War II. This was a father in agony.
"And of course there it was, that was it. They had indeed a great adventure, an essential adventure, and almost everyone in the room had been nineteen or twenty years old when they had it, and they survived and had come home and their wives had given birth to sons, and now those sons were nineteen, twenty, and perhaps it was not such a great adventure this time. Perhaps it was hard to bring quite the same urgency to holding a position in a Vietnamese village or two that they had brought to liberating Europe."
Another favorite essay was Last Words where Didion talks about Ernest Hemingway and his book A Farewell to Arms, Didion states that "this was a man to whom words mattered. He worked at them, he understood them, he got inside them." As noted in the Foreword to this book by Hilton Als:
And one that we should all heed was her unforgettable essay On Being Unchosen by the College of One's Choice. Didion, being a California girl, at age seventeen, applied and expected to be accepted to Stanford University. Upon receiving a letter of rejection, she was devastated and, in her words, "spent the rest of the spring in sullen but mild rebellion." She went on to the University of California at Berkley in the fall. The next year a friend at Stanford asked her to write him a paper on Conrad's Nostromo, and she did. While her friend got an A on it, Didion got a B- on the same paper at Berkley. It was then that she was free of the stigma of not being accepted at Stanford University and realized that because of her education at Berkley, she was a better writer than she may have been. This is an important essay as she assesses parents' expectations for their children and the unfair burden that may result and how getting into college has become an ugly business. As Didion relates, "When my father was told that I had been rejected by Stanford, he shrugged and offered me a drink." Indeed!
In the words of Hilton Als in the Foreword to the book I read and dated July 2020:
"Her narrative nonfiction is a question about the truth. And if her nonfiction is synonymous with anything says Didion in work after work, it is with the idea that the truth is provisional, and the only thing backing it up is who you are at the time you wrote this or that, and that your joys and biases and prejudices are part of writing, too."
There were so many riveting and thought-provoking essays about so many subjects. One of the most poignant was the essay, Fathers, Sons, Screaming Eagles. Didion was in Las Vegas in 1968 interviewing a man in his early forties who had been at Bastogne in 1944 with the 101st Airborne Division and there for their twenty-third annual reunion. His son was missing in action in the Vietnam War and there were the contrasts to that military action and World War II. This was a father in agony.
"And of course there it was, that was it. They had indeed a great adventure, an essential adventure, and almost everyone in the room had been nineteen or twenty years old when they had it, and they survived and had come home and their wives had given birth to sons, and now those sons were nineteen, twenty, and perhaps it was not such a great adventure this time. Perhaps it was hard to bring quite the same urgency to holding a position in a Vietnamese village or two that they had brought to liberating Europe."
Another favorite essay was Last Words where Didion talks about Ernest Hemingway and his book A Farewell to Arms, Didion states that "this was a man to whom words mattered. He worked at them, he understood them, he got inside them." As noted in the Foreword to this book by Hilton Als:
"She has a great deal to say about the craft in her 1998 essay about Ernest Hemingway, parts of which feel like a a self-portrait of Joan Didion herself. The very grammar of a Hemingway sentence dictated, or was dictated by, a certain way of looking at the world, a way of looking but not joining, a way of moving through but not attaching, a kind of romantic individualism distinctly adapted to its time and source."
And one that we should all heed was her unforgettable essay On Being Unchosen by the College of One's Choice. Didion, being a California girl, at age seventeen, applied and expected to be accepted to Stanford University. Upon receiving a letter of rejection, she was devastated and, in her words, "spent the rest of the spring in sullen but mild rebellion." She went on to the University of California at Berkley in the fall. The next year a friend at Stanford asked her to write him a paper on Conrad's Nostromo, and she did. While her friend got an A on it, Didion got a B- on the same paper at Berkley. It was then that she was free of the stigma of not being accepted at Stanford University and realized that because of her education at Berkley, she was a better writer than she may have been. This is an important essay as she assesses parents' expectations for their children and the unfair burden that may result and how getting into college has become an ugly business. As Didion relates, "When my father was told that I had been rejected by Stanford, he shrugged and offered me a drink." Indeed!
Read
February 15, 2024Beautiful writing
July 14, 2022
This was my first acquaintance with the legendary Didion (1934-2021). This short booklet gives a sample of her columns and slightly longer pieces, spread over her entire career. They aren't all gems, of course, but you can tell how straightforward her style was, and how sharp-witted she could describe things. It may not be entirely representative, but the way she portrays Nancy Reagan (wife of the then California governor Ronald Reagan) is both charming and disenchanting. And in both ‘Telling Stories’ and ‘Last Words’ she gives a nice introspection into her way of writing, and in that of others, such as her great example Ernest Hemingway. The only regrettable thing about this book is the voluminous preface, in which just about everything that follows is already given away and explained.
November 25, 2023
Her mind I can’t
December 27, 2020
3.5 ⭐️ for this collection of previously published Joan Didion columns and essays. Like South and West, this book will be most interesting for Didion-heads who have already read her best work – nothing super memorable here, although I did enjoy the essay about Hemingway toward the end of the book.
November 22, 2024
Sometimes, after reading Didion’s damn near perfect prose, I don’t feel like I can do it justice. So I’m going to allow her to do most of the work in this review. This wonderful anthology, mostly of her early work, gives us the opportunity to bask in the icy genius of
Joan Didion explaining herself:
”I am not in the least an intellectual. I do not think in abstracts. I would try to contemplate the Hegelian dialectic, and would find myself concentrating instead on a flowering pear tree outside my window, and the particular way the pedals fell on my floor.”
Joan Didion explaining others:
”Nancy Reagan says almost everything with spirit, perhaps because she was an actress for a couple of years and has the beginning actresses habit of investing even the most casual lines with a good deal more dramatic emphasis than is ordinarily called for on a Tuesday morning on 45th Street in Sacramento.”
John Didion explaining newspapers:
”Do not misread me; I admire objectivity very much indeed, but I fail to see how it can be achieved if the reader does not understand the writer’s particular bias.”
Joan Didion explaining her writing process:
”The arrangement of the words matters. And the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. The picture dictates the arrangement. The picture dictates whether this will be a sentence with or without clauses, a sentence that ends hard or a dying fall sentence, long or short, active or passive. The picture tells you how to arrange the words, and the arrangement of the words tells you, or tells me, what’s going on in the picture.”
Of course, there is much more, and, of course, it is brilliant.
Joan Didion explaining herself:
”I am not in the least an intellectual. I do not think in abstracts. I would try to contemplate the Hegelian dialectic, and would find myself concentrating instead on a flowering pear tree outside my window, and the particular way the pedals fell on my floor.”
Joan Didion explaining others:
”Nancy Reagan says almost everything with spirit, perhaps because she was an actress for a couple of years and has the beginning actresses habit of investing even the most casual lines with a good deal more dramatic emphasis than is ordinarily called for on a Tuesday morning on 45th Street in Sacramento.”
John Didion explaining newspapers:
”Do not misread me; I admire objectivity very much indeed, but I fail to see how it can be achieved if the reader does not understand the writer’s particular bias.”
Joan Didion explaining her writing process:
”The arrangement of the words matters. And the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. The picture dictates the arrangement. The picture dictates whether this will be a sentence with or without clauses, a sentence that ends hard or a dying fall sentence, long or short, active or passive. The picture tells you how to arrange the words, and the arrangement of the words tells you, or tells me, what’s going on in the picture.”
Of course, there is much more, and, of course, it is brilliant.
February 21, 2021
Well, Didion could write a shopping list and I would be interested in reading it. Come to think of it, I am VERY interested in reading Didion's shopping lists. If you know of any that are publicly available, please let me know.
July 23, 2023
I have read several books by Joan Didion, one of the writers I felt guided my way through the cultural landscape as I lived the decades. I always liked her non-fiction as well as her fiction. Since I read most of the books before Goodreads, and I haven't (yet?) reread them, they remain unreviewed, but reading this collection makes me want to return to her, as if getting together with an old friend, one who is insightful and smart and often amusing (bemused, someone wrote of her).
This collection was published in January 2021; she died in December 2021, and I bought it from my local bookstore that same month, just reading it now.
This is a collection of twelve essays, most of them never published in any book, from 1968 through 2000. The early ones are generally from The Saturday Evening Post and are short, punchy, young but still sharp writing: One on a Gambler's Anonymous meeting she attended, another on being rejected from Stanford, on a visit to San Simeon with a niece, a piece on Nancy Reagan, and a visit to a WWII Vets meeting in Vegas held during the Viet Nam war. She observes, she doesn't harshly judge.
I like the later and longer pieces more: "Why I Write," (1976); a piece about why she writes novels instead of short stories, a great piece (1998) on the issue of publishing weak writing from Hemingway that he explicitly did not want published, weakening his reputation. A New Yorker piece in defense of Martha Stewart from 2000.
In the light of all of her great work, this might earn three stars from many readers, but as I said, she's an old friend, I like her voice, I love her insights and attention to language. nice to return to her.
This collection was published in January 2021; she died in December 2021, and I bought it from my local bookstore that same month, just reading it now.
This is a collection of twelve essays, most of them never published in any book, from 1968 through 2000. The early ones are generally from The Saturday Evening Post and are short, punchy, young but still sharp writing: One on a Gambler's Anonymous meeting she attended, another on being rejected from Stanford, on a visit to San Simeon with a niece, a piece on Nancy Reagan, and a visit to a WWII Vets meeting in Vegas held during the Viet Nam war. She observes, she doesn't harshly judge.
I like the later and longer pieces more: "Why I Write," (1976); a piece about why she writes novels instead of short stories, a great piece (1998) on the issue of publishing weak writing from Hemingway that he explicitly did not want published, weakening his reputation. A New Yorker piece in defense of Martha Stewart from 2000.
In the light of all of her great work, this might earn three stars from many readers, but as I said, she's an old friend, I like her voice, I love her insights and attention to language. nice to return to her.
December 30, 2021
I have admired the work of Joan Didion for decades, but why have I read only two of her works in the last twenty years? And now, unfortunately, she is no more. Let Me Tell You What I Mean consists of essays written between 1968 and 2000 but not previously published in book form.
It is not her best work, but even her lesser writings are like gems. Wherever she turned her calm, watchful eyes, the result was a simple and clear understanding of the strangenesses of our lives. I for one will miss her, but now at least I will try to read everything she has written.
It is not her best work, but even her lesser writings are like gems. Wherever she turned her calm, watchful eyes, the result was a simple and clear understanding of the strangenesses of our lives. I for one will miss her, but now at least I will try to read everything she has written.
December 23, 2022
in which didion tells you what she means
July 14, 2021
“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.”
Reading these words, as someone who thinks she is just trying to write to understand herself and the world around, made me feel validated.
I believe anyone who engages in the act of writing does so to essentially explore one’s own mind. Writing carries with it the wistful desire to take a leap inside and to discover what lies deep in the subliminal self. To explore that which moves or makes one recoil, to look at all that the world offers and to figure what makes sense, to unburden and accept oneself in its relation and to hold onto that which gives sustenance.
Through her essays, through her writing, Didion observes the image that her mind captures and let it glimmer there until she finds its element, its soul and then shape the form in words. Reading her essays is an inquiry into the realm of human existence in its fundamental character. A pursuit definitely rewarding.
Reading these words, as someone who thinks she is just trying to write to understand herself and the world around, made me feel validated.
I believe anyone who engages in the act of writing does so to essentially explore one’s own mind. Writing carries with it the wistful desire to take a leap inside and to discover what lies deep in the subliminal self. To explore that which moves or makes one recoil, to look at all that the world offers and to figure what makes sense, to unburden and accept oneself in its relation and to hold onto that which gives sustenance.
Through her essays, through her writing, Didion observes the image that her mind captures and let it glimmer there until she finds its element, its soul and then shape the form in words. Reading her essays is an inquiry into the realm of human existence in its fundamental character. A pursuit definitely rewarding.
November 10, 2020
Y’all don’t need me to tell you to read Joan Didion. But, this is a newly published collection that may have some undiscovered essays in it. Reading Joan, to me, is like leafing through your Hipstamatic filters, causing you to see things in a different way again and again. Some of these are from the late 1960s, but the one about the turmoil college admissions could have been written yesterday. All were great, but after reading her examination of Hemingway, I’ll never view the process of writing any fiction the same. This is what you save your five stars for.
February 25, 2021
A collection of twelve previously unpublished pieces. Joan's voice in some of this early work as clearly defined and in tact as her later longer form, denser and more absorbing pieces. I personally find her writing style soothing in the way a voyeur, suspended above and outside of the world, looking in with acute perceptiveness and a heightened sense of the minutiae of life, might feel. Always a pleasure.
February 2, 2024
not my favourite essay collection from didion, but i will happily read her writing about anything tbh
February 18, 2021
This new release contains previously published but uncollected writing from Joan Didion, spanning the years 1968-2000. That alone will be sufficient incentive for most readers already familiar with her stellar work to find the time to read it. Given the junior varsity nature of the selections, is isn't her very best collection, but everything in it is classic Didion, and there are a few real gems.
Several of the pieces share common themes: that great writing (especially journalism) is predicated upon an honest response from the writer/reporter, including open identification and acceptance of underlying bias; that talent alone is insufficient for success in any field but requires an alchemical transformation through hard work; that the best artists suffer both for, and because of, their Art in order to remain true to their unique vision.
Interestingly, I thought her strongest essays were those that discuss encounters with - or analysis of - celebrity. She settles her knowing gaze upon movers and shakers like Nancy Reagan, Robert Mapplethorpe, Tony Richardson, Ernest Hemmingway, and Martha Stewart. As much as I had hoped to gain more insight into her own process, neither "Why I Write" nor "Telling Stories" were among my favorites. However, Didion's withering, clear-eyed disdain for those who try and edit - or otherwise modify - any author's unfinished works for posthumous publication is stated loudly and clearly. It seems an obvious shot across the bow as she herself approaches "the end of the line".
In summary, this is a solid, often strong new addition to Didion's authorized publications. A few of these pieces should go on to enjoy great popularity, especially the outstanding (and still relevant) "On Being Unchosen by the College of One's Choice".
Several of the pieces share common themes: that great writing (especially journalism) is predicated upon an honest response from the writer/reporter, including open identification and acceptance of underlying bias; that talent alone is insufficient for success in any field but requires an alchemical transformation through hard work; that the best artists suffer both for, and because of, their Art in order to remain true to their unique vision.
Interestingly, I thought her strongest essays were those that discuss encounters with - or analysis of - celebrity. She settles her knowing gaze upon movers and shakers like Nancy Reagan, Robert Mapplethorpe, Tony Richardson, Ernest Hemmingway, and Martha Stewart. As much as I had hoped to gain more insight into her own process, neither "Why I Write" nor "Telling Stories" were among my favorites. However, Didion's withering, clear-eyed disdain for those who try and edit - or otherwise modify - any author's unfinished works for posthumous publication is stated loudly and clearly. It seems an obvious shot across the bow as she herself approaches "the end of the line".
In summary, this is a solid, often strong new addition to Didion's authorized publications. A few of these pieces should go on to enjoy great popularity, especially the outstanding (and still relevant) "On Being Unchosen by the College of One's Choice".
February 18, 2021
3.5 rounded up
Whilst something of a discordant collection, I enjoyed all of these essays; as with any collection (especially one ranging from the 80s to 00s) there are some that are better than others, but Didion fans are unlikely to be disappointed -- even with repackaged material. If you've not ready Didion before, I wouldn't suggest starting here - Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album would be better options, but in all honesty this is worth reading for the Hemingway essay alone (which focuses on an author's work being published posthumously without their consent). Recommended!
Whilst something of a discordant collection, I enjoyed all of these essays; as with any collection (especially one ranging from the 80s to 00s) there are some that are better than others, but Didion fans are unlikely to be disappointed -- even with repackaged material. If you've not ready Didion before, I wouldn't suggest starting here - Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album would be better options, but in all honesty this is worth reading for the Hemingway essay alone (which focuses on an author's work being published posthumously without their consent). Recommended!
February 16, 2021
Didion is always enjoyable and this collection of previously unpublished works is no exception. Like most collections, some hold up better than others, but overall the pieces provide a staggering snapshot of Didion as a writer. Somehow, I had never noticed just how central she is in all her writing. It gave me a lot to think about in terms of how everything we read is through the lens of the writer--Didion is just more upfront about her presence than most.
I've seen complaints that some of the writings feel irrelevant given later events (in one piece, she spends time with Nancy Reagan in 1968, when she was the wife of the Governor of California and, most significantly, she writes about Martha Stewart before Stewart's arrest for insider trading). I respectfully disagree. For me, these snapshots are even more fascinating given what we know about how things turned out (and what Didion had no way of knowing at the time).
While I would not recommend this as a starting point for the uninitiated, Let Me Tell You What I Mean is a gem of a collection for the Didion devoted. Given that much of the pieces are bite-sized, I devoured it in a single evening and it felt like time well spent.
I've seen complaints that some of the writings feel irrelevant given later events (in one piece, she spends time with Nancy Reagan in 1968, when she was the wife of the Governor of California and, most significantly, she writes about Martha Stewart before Stewart's arrest for insider trading). I respectfully disagree. For me, these snapshots are even more fascinating given what we know about how things turned out (and what Didion had no way of knowing at the time).
While I would not recommend this as a starting point for the uninitiated, Let Me Tell You What I Mean is a gem of a collection for the Didion devoted. Given that much of the pieces are bite-sized, I devoured it in a single evening and it felt like time well spent.
October 3, 2021
Najbardziej podoba mi się, kiedy Didion pisze o samym pisaniu. Esej o Hemingwayu- fenomenalny, ale czuć wyraźnie upływ czasu pomiędzy kolejnymi tekstami (na plus). Nie podobała mi się za to przedmowa, bo trochę... spoiluje? zwartość, zwłaszcza przytaczając (wcale nie krótkie) fragmenty tego, co przecież nadal przed nami. Podoba mi się też, że Didion nie udaje obiektywnej na siłę i wyraźnie zajmuje konkretną pozycję i faktycznie mówi nam, co myśli.
February 5, 2023
This is my third Joan Didion essay collection and I still don’t get the hype. Her prose is just fine? Most of the topics she writes about, particularly here, I found uninteresting. Her digressions as well. I think people are more fascinated by her persona, but I don’t see her essays ageing well.
November 9, 2024
O s-o citesc în mod consecvent pe Joan Didion, romane, eseuri, tot ce s-or îndura sã traducã în limba românã. Ceva din personalitatea ei, poate erudiția îmbibatã de modestie, poate umanitatea ce rãzbate din toți porii/cuvintele ei, este irezistibil pentru mine. Aṣa stã treaba.
October 1, 2021
„Specyfika bycia pisarzem polega na tym, że całe to przedsięwzięcie obejmuje śmiertelne upokorzenie obserwowaniem własnych słów w druku. Ryzyko publikacji to ponury fakt życiowy”, pisze Didion w artykule poświęconym pośmiertnym losom dzieł Hemingwaya.
I nawet jeśli was autor „Starego człowieka…” zupełnie nie interesuje i nie zajmuje. Ba! Nawet nie zamierzacie zmienić swojego stanowiska w tej sprawie, to przeczytajcie ten tekst, zrozumiecie wtedy, dlaczego niektórzy palą rękopisy.
To, co zrobiono z pozostałymi po pisarzu rękopisami, skrawkami, ścinkami i listami, przeczy nie tylko woli pisarza, ale i ludzkiej przyzwoitości. Amerykański pisarz – przypomnę – popełnił samobójstwo. Ale czy to znaczy, że trzeba natychmiast z biurka pisarza zgarniać maszynopis, wykręcać kartkę z maszyny i publikować? Tak, zwłaszcza gdy kilkanaście lat później rodzina będzie zarabiała na meblarskiej „kolekcji Ernesta Hemingwaya”.
To też jeden z tych tekstów, w którym Didion wyraźnie opowiada się po jednej stronie konfliktu. Nie jest dziennikarką obiektywną, a jej aparat pisarski nie dąży do obiektywizacji. Didion szuka w swoich opowieściach uniwersalizmów – demaskuje mechanizmy, które rządzą rynkiem, polityką, czy kulturą.
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Więcej: https://www.empik.com/empikultura/ksi...
I nawet jeśli was autor „Starego człowieka…” zupełnie nie interesuje i nie zajmuje. Ba! Nawet nie zamierzacie zmienić swojego stanowiska w tej sprawie, to przeczytajcie ten tekst, zrozumiecie wtedy, dlaczego niektórzy palą rękopisy.
To, co zrobiono z pozostałymi po pisarzu rękopisami, skrawkami, ścinkami i listami, przeczy nie tylko woli pisarza, ale i ludzkiej przyzwoitości. Amerykański pisarz – przypomnę – popełnił samobójstwo. Ale czy to znaczy, że trzeba natychmiast z biurka pisarza zgarniać maszynopis, wykręcać kartkę z maszyny i publikować? Tak, zwłaszcza gdy kilkanaście lat później rodzina będzie zarabiała na meblarskiej „kolekcji Ernesta Hemingwaya”.
To też jeden z tych tekstów, w którym Didion wyraźnie opowiada się po jednej stronie konfliktu. Nie jest dziennikarką obiektywną, a jej aparat pisarski nie dąży do obiektywizacji. Didion szuka w swoich opowieściach uniwersalizmów – demaskuje mechanizmy, które rządzą rynkiem, polityką, czy kulturą.
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Więcej: https://www.empik.com/empikultura/ksi...
March 1, 2021
Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion is a collection of essays written by the author over the course of years about various topics and also talking about the publishing industry in mid 90s. We also get to read about how her earlier books were rejected by various publishing houses.
This is the first book I am reading by this author and exploring her work was quite an experience for me. I am in awe with the rawness of writing and truths written in this book. I am actually a person who reads both fiction and non-fiction equally (well, almost) and also enjoy is the same.
The essays were also based on concerns about writing and creative process in general. All the essays were diverse yet facing the common threads of societal issues at that time. Another essay about Ernest Hemingway and his book. Here, the six essays are written in 1968 from the "Points West" Saturday Evening Post column Joan Didion shared from 1964 to 1969 with her husband.
3. 5 stars
This is the first book I am reading by this author and exploring her work was quite an experience for me. I am in awe with the rawness of writing and truths written in this book. I am actually a person who reads both fiction and non-fiction equally (well, almost) and also enjoy is the same.
The essays were also based on concerns about writing and creative process in general. All the essays were diverse yet facing the common threads of societal issues at that time. Another essay about Ernest Hemingway and his book. Here, the six essays are written in 1968 from the "Points West" Saturday Evening Post column Joan Didion shared from 1964 to 1969 with her husband.
3. 5 stars
December 4, 2022
Let Me Tell You What I Mean is a slightly random collections of works she wrote over a period of time. The pieces, while impersonal, captured her writing well. I particularly liked the piece "Why I Write" and the piece on Hemmingway. It's a short read and worth it if you enjoy Didion's work.
March 26, 2022
First experience with Joan Didion and a great one. Her writing made me feel like I was in the same room where the story was taking place and, as a nosy queen, I loved that.
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