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Title: The White Album by Joan Didion ISBN: 0-374-52221-9 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1990 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.91 (11 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Many mornings after the 60s
Comment: The White Album was published in 1979, and most of the material here is from the 1970s. Even so, the book is at least as much about the 1960s as is Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Like that book, this is a collection of essays from various publications, plus some previously unpublished material. It's a mixed bag. The title piece is quite strong, as is "On The Morning After The Sixties," proving, perhaps, that the 1960s really were Didion's one true subject. There's other good stuff here, too, and the book is actually sort of underrated, since so many observers rate it a poor second to Slouching Towards Bethlehem. But the Didion style is actually quite strong in this volume, sharply observed, carefully written, personal without being confessional, and always flirting with detachment but not quite achieving it. Obviously some people just can't stand Didion's essays, and this book would hardly change their mind; but if you're open to her style, this is worth reading.
Rating: 4
Summary: People and places of the 60s and 70s
Comment: Joan Didion's essays are sharply observed and very personal. She informs us of her fragile mental state in the very first essay, in which she describes a pervasive sense of detachment that she felt from the world. She then goes on to deliver a collection of well-written profiles on personalities, places, and the concerns of the time (late 60s-early 70s). Didion inserts herself and her personal issues into these pieces on ocassion, which no doubt contributes to the accusation by some that she is a whiner. On the contrary, I feel that it was courageous for Didion to reveal herself this way and that the awareness of the narrator as a fragile, flawed individual rather than an omnipotent, god-like commentator pronouncing judgement on its subjects gives a unity and a perspective to these disparate pieces that they would not have possessed otherwise.
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent writing
Comment: Didion is a master essayist with an excellent command of the English language. The quality of her prose alone justifies a 5-star rating.
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Title: Slouching Towards Bethlehem : Essays by Joan Didion ISBN: 0374521727 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1990 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Where I Was From by JOAN DIDION ISBN: 0679433325 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 23 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: Play It As It Lays : A Novel by Joan Didion ISBN: 0374521719 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1990 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Everyday America: Cultural Landscape Studies after J. B. Jackson by Chris Wilson, Paul Groth ISBN: 0520229614 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Fixed Ideas: America Since 9.11 by Joan Didion, Frank Rich ISBN: 1590170733 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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