Monday , November 16, 2009
Random Picture Entry: Joan Didion
I'm going through this huge Joan Didion phase at the moment. I shouted out Play It As It Lays before, but I'm also reading lots and lots of her essays and interviews and nonfiction collections, including the totes brilliant Slouching Towards Bethlehem. I love Didion because she's a sharp observer of society and individuals, able to distill a whole mood into a perfect journalistic detail -- and with the most astringent, bracingly bare prose you'll ever read. There's nothing sentimental about Didion -- she's a tough dame, and her mind is almost merciless in its acuity. I personally would hate to be the subject of a Didion essay, but it's the way her words are wrought that keep me coming back to her again and again. I love looking at these pictures of her from the 60s and 70s, which show her sense of style back then was as austere, detached and discerning as her words. It's as if she's doing more than just wearing outfits -- instead, she's making gestures with clothing and accessories, making only the slightest concession to femininity and to the California of the late 60s that these photos are mostly from. She dresses as smart, deceptively minimal and stripped-down elegant as her prose, and I'll be damned if that isn't the ne plus ultra of style when you think about it.
Tags: books, Joan Didion, writers
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Posted by Kat in Random Picture Entry |
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Yes! More Didion reports, plz!
By Erin D. on July 16, 2008 5:10 AM
Love her so. Much.
By Ms. Fab on July 16, 2008 2:44 PM
she's one of my heroes. i love all of her essay collections, but i'm partial to 'where i was from' since i grew up in the bay area and went to college near sacramento. and 'year of magical thinking' was especially heartbreaking.
By robin on July 18, 2008 2:35 AM
Miss Didion is an interesting person to read. I find her work very enthralling. What amazed me so much about the character of Elena McMahon, for example, in "The Last Thing He Wanted," was the question she ably evokes concerning that character: Is Elena an evil character? Are we to sympathize with her predicament? Well, I guess so, to a degree. The narrator Lilliane Owen is clearly fascinated by her, but she leaves out the analysis of good and evil. I think it's an interesting point to discuss.
By Frederic Kolman on August 6, 2008 10:01 PM