South And West: From A Notebook

Author: Joan Didion

Stock information

General Fields

  • : $19.99 AUD
  • : 9780008257286
  • : HarperCollins Publishers Australia
  • : Fourth Estate Ltd
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  • : 0.27
  • : May 2017
  • : 197mm X 130mm
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  • : 19.99
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  • : December 2020
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  • : books

Special Fields

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  • : Joan Didion
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  • : Paperback
  • : 417
  • :
  • :
  • : 818.54
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  • :
  • : 160
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Barcode 9780008257286
9780008257286

Description

From the best-selling author of the National Book Award-winning The Year of Magical Thinking: two extended excerpts from her never-before-seen notebooks-writings that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary writer. Joan Didion has always kept notebooks: of overheard dialogue, observations, interviews, drafts of essays and articles-and here is one such draft that traces a road trip she took with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, in June 1970, through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. She interviews prominent local figures, describes motels, diners, a deserted reptile farm, a visit with Walker Percy, a ladies' brunch at the Mississippi Broadcasters' Convention. She writes about the stifling heat, the almost viscous pace of life, the sulfurous light, and the preoccupation with race, class, and heritage she finds in the small towns they pass through. And from a different notebook: the "California Notes" that began as an assignment from Rolling Stone on the Patty Hearst trial of 1976. Though Didion never wrote the piece, watching the trial and being in San Francisco triggered thoughts about the city, its social hierarchy, the Hearsts, and her own upbringing in Sacramento. Here, too, is the beginning of her thinking about the West, its landscape, the western women who were heroic for her, and her own lineage, all of which would appear later in her acclaimed 2003 book, Where I Was From.

Reviews

'Didion at her most fascinatingly unfiltered, recording folksy vernacular at a motel pool, having G & Ts with Walker Percy, and searching fruitlessly for Faulkner's grave in an Oxford cemetery ... her riffs on everything from Gertrude Atherton to crossing the Golden Gate bridge for the first time in three-inch heels captures the thrill of a writer discovering her richest subject: the American mythologies that governed her own romantic girlhood, a yearning for an MGM-style heritage that never really was - a yearning that feels freshly perilous in its delusions.' Vogue 'A compelling book - rooted utterly in a past now all but lost to us, while also incredibly timely and relevant ... It bears the hallmarks of Didion's sparkling prose ... It finally sees the light of day at a moment when California and the Real America of the South are warring over the soul of the country ... Vital, ultimately, for how it demonstrates (even inadvertently) how such a tension plays out.' Los Angeles Review of Books 'You'll learn more about America's future from Didion's 40-year-old field notes than you will from tomorrow's newspaper' Esquire 'There's a universal rule against reading someone else's diary - but in this case, it's not just OK, it's required reading' Marie Claire 'The power of Didion's work-her ability to precisely articulate feelings, atmosphere, and undercurrents, is on striking display in this slender volume ... Didion's notes are remarkably polished and slicing; they shimmer with dark implications. A book for her many avid readers, and anyone interested in the mysterious process of writing.' Booklist 'Here are many of the splendid, sharp-eyed sentences for which [Didion] has long been admired ... her observations are classics: a man with a shotgun shooting pigeons on a street in a Mississippi town; a comment about the fierce heat: 'all movement seemed liquid.' An almost spectral text haunted by a past that never seems distant.' Kirkus Reviews

Author description

Joan Didion is one of America's most respected writers, her work constituting some of the greatest portraits of modern-day American culture. Over the four decades of her career, she has produced widely-acclaimed journalistic essays, personal essays, novels, non-fiction, memoir and screenplays. Her memoir The Year of Magical Thinking won the National Book Award in 2005.