Slouching Towards Bethlehem - Joan Didion

Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays by Joan Didion / ISBN 9780374531386 / 256-page paperback from FSG Classics *** Upon its publication in 1968, Slouching Towards Bethlehem confirmed Joan Didion as one of the most prominent writers on the literary scene. Her unblinking vision and deadpan tone have influenced subsequent generations of reporters and essayists, changing our expectations of style, voice, and the artistic possibilities of nonfiction. "In her portraits of people," the New York Times Book Review wrote, "Didion is not out to expose but to understand, and she shows us actors and millionaires, doomed brides and naive acid-trippers, left-wing ideologues and snobs of the Hawaiian aristocracy in a way that makes them neither villainous nor glamorous, but alive and botched and often mournfully beautiful. . . . A rare display of some of the best prose written today in this country." In essay after essay, Didion captures the dislocation of the 1960s, the disorientation of a country sh