Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion
- Let Me Tell You What I Mean
- Joan Didion
- Page: 192
- Format: pdf, ePub, mobi, fb2
- ISBN: 9780593318485
- Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
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Overview
Notes From Your Bookseller A new book by Joan Didion sets our hearts on fire. From politics to culture, Didion sets the bar high for literary nonfiction essays. Hilton Als' generous introduction is worthy of its own anthology. Als states her writing "anticipated the deeply troubling politics of today." This collection captures the best of the most interesting conversations. One moment, you're discussing history, the next a favorite novelist and then, at another point, a personal anecdote. Joan Didion should be first the person on your literary dinner party guest list. If she's busy—then you still have these essays. From one of our most iconic and influential writers: a timeless collection of mostly early pieces that reveal what would become Joan Didion's subjects, including the press, politics, California robber barons, women, and her own self-doubt. These twelve pieces from 1968 to 2000, never before gathered together, offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary figure. They showcase Joan Didion's incisive reporting, her empathetic gaze, and her role as "an articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time" (The New York Times Book Review). Here, Didion touches on topics ranging from newspapers ("the problem is not so much whether one trusts the news as to whether one finds it"), to the fantasy of San Simeon, to not getting into Stanford. In "Why I Write," Didion ponders the act of writing: "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means." From her admiration for Hemingway's sentences to her acknowledgment that Martha Stewart's story is one "that has historically encouraged women in this country, even as it has threatened men," these essays are acutely and brilliantly observed. Each piece is classic Didion: incisive, bemused, and stunningly prescient.