Books: Slouching Towards Los Angeles: Living and Writing by Joan Didion's Light
An anthology that reflects on Joan Didion's writing and her love for California.
Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem is one of my favorite essay collections. Part of the reason I love it so much is because of the way it exposes the noir side of California, in San Bernardino County, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Hollywood … you name it.
But Joan Didion loved California, and I love this collection of essays by writers who drew inspiration from her and many of whom came to California from the East Coast, as Didion did, or from other places, and were either surprised, disappointed, or inspired.
Nearly all of the writers included in this anthology came to California from elsewhere. A number of them left New York for California as a respite from the East Coast city’s perceived hardness. Some came away disappointed, the promise of California unfulfilled. In “The Opposite of Cool,” Joshua Wolf Shenk writes that he moved to Los Angeles after realizing that “less pressure came down” on his L.A. friends. Shenk “thought L.A. would be a softer way to live but [he] was surprised at its hard edges.”
Others, like Ann Friedman, found their “golden rhythm” in California. In the anthology’s first piece, “Hello to All This,” Friedman writes about her relocation from Missouri to New York and then to California. Friedman’s relationship with New York wasn’t the eight-year love affair with the sad ending that Didion documents in “Goodbye to All This.” Rather, Friedman experiences a “brief New York tryst” that, in the end, she realizes was “always meant to be platonic.” Those who don’t appreciate California’s easier way of life, Friedman writes, “equate comfort with complacency, calmness with laziness. If you’re happy, you’re not working hard enough.” Didion drifted from a New York that had become tedious, a lover that hadn’t fulfilled its promises to her, a place where “the golden rhythm” had been broken. Friedman never made the same connections with New York that Didion had. Friedman didn’t reject New York; she embraced California.
—Leanne Phillips
You can read my review here: Book Review: Slouching Towards Los Angeles: Living and Writing by Joan Didion’s Light.
I hope it will inspire you to read the book, and then perhaps to read (more) of Joan Didion’s work.
