Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays

By Joan Didion

Book Overview

Joan Didion's first work of nonfiction, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, is considered a masterpiece of American literature and the "foundational text" of her oeuvre (New York Times). First published in 1968, the book remains a defining work about the Sixties, about California, about America.

More than perhaps any other book, this collection of essays by Didion--one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era--captures her focus on time and place at a unique moment in history. Here, Didion explores people and subjects such as John Wayne, Howard Hughes, growing up in California, the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, and the birth of American counterculture. Didion's work in Slouching has become a totem for readers "who have lost their sense of place or sense of time or sense of self" (The Rumpus). "In her portraits of people," writes the New York Times, "Didion is not out to expose but to understand."

Hailed as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time (Time Magazine) and as a classic of New Journalism, Slouching Towards Bethlehem is Didion at her finest.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374531382
• ISBN13: 9780374531386
• Release Date: October 2008
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

excellent example of the essay form

Didion's collection of essays was recommended to me by writing instructors as an example of excellent essay writing. I found it to be just that. In the first third, she writes a series of remarkable essays about California in the late 1960s. The middle third contains personal essays. And the book finishes with a collection of essays about different places she's been - New York, Hartford, Hawaii, Sacramento. What makes her writing most impressive is her masterful presentation of portraits, inserting herself just occasionally to remind the reader of who the photographer was, to inject humanity. She does an excellent job combining place and character and shows that long sentences can work. This book is useful both an as example to those who aspire to writing better essays and as a memorable voice from the 1960s.

America's finest essayist, at her finest

I have owned several copies of this book, and have given away more copies than I can count. It's a book I come back to, at least once a year since 1980, when I first read it. It seems to me to be better and better each time. The times it's about may be long gone, but the issues at the heart of these essays haven't changed much at all.Much has been made of Didion's take on California, and this book is laden with essays about the place, and the people, and a particular time that - as other reviewers here have noted - has a different resonance in popular culture than the one she presents here. Didion herself recently professed some alarm at the idea that she is an expert on the place (in 'Where I Was From'), but there's no doubt that she's provided more food for thought about contemporary culture than almost anyone else. But the real strength of her writing is in her prose style, in which not a single sentence is sloppy, or ill-considered. Her style is distinctive, but it's not just for show. There are other fine essayists working today, but few are as disciplined and considered as Didion in the way they write.It's probably a toss-up as to whether this book or 'The White Album' is a better place to start with Didion's work. I think 'The White Album' is a more cohesive collection, but there are better individual essays in 'Slouching', including the sublime essays in the 'Personals' section. And chances are that once you've read one, you'll read the other, and in that case it makes sense to start with the earlier collection, which is this one.