Particularize Books Supposing The White Album
| Original Title: | The White Album |
| ISBN: | 0374522219 (ISBN13: 9780374522216) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee for General Nonfiction (1979), National Book Award Finalist for General Nonfiction (Paperback) (1981) |
Joan Didion
Paperback | Pages: 222 pages Rating: 4.16 | 15449 Users | 1107 Reviews
Details Out Of Books The White Album
| Title | : | The White Album |
| Author | : | Joan Didion |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 222 pages |
| Published | : | October 1st 1990 by Farrar Straus Giroux (first published 1979) |
| Categories | : | Nonfiction. Writing. Essays. Autobiography. Memoir. History. Journalism. Classics. Biography |
Explanation In Favor Of Books The White Album
First published in 1979, "The White Album "is a journalistic mosaic" "of American life in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. It includes, among other bizarre artifacts and personalities, reportage on the dark journeys and impulses of the Manson family, a visit to a Black Panther Party press conference, the story of John Paul Getty's museum, a meditation on the romance of water in an arid landscape, and reflections on the swirl and confusion that marked this era. With commanding sureness of mood and language, Didion exposes the realities and dreams of an age of self-discovery whose spiritual center was California.Table of Contents
I. THE WHITE ALBUM
"The White Album"
II. CALIFORNIA REPUBLIC
"James Pike, American"
"Holy Water"
"Many Mansions"
"The Getty"
"Bureaucrats"
"Good Citizens"
"Notes Toward a Dreampolitik"
III. WOMEN
"The Women's Movement"
"Doris Lessing"
"Georgia O'Keeffe"
IV. SOJOURNS
"In the Islands"
"In Hollywood"
"In Bed"
"On the Road"
"On the Mall"
"In Bogota"
"At the Dam"
V. ON THE MORNING AFTER THE SIXTIES
"On the Morning After the Sixties"
"Quiet Days in Malibu"
Rating Out Of Books The White Album
Ratings: 4.16 From 15449 Users | 1107 ReviewsWeigh Up Out Of Books The White Album
This is my first Joan Didion book, and for me, it's a hit and miss. An enjoyable read and obviously a good writer, but I don't feel any sense of passion or deep interest. I was curious to read "The White Album" because I live in Los Angeles. I remember the Charles Manson times as being very scary in Los Angeles, and Didion captures those horrifying moments as it happened. One gravely suspected things are not entirely OK, which was a direct contrast with the Hippie thing at the time. A bad vibeI started reading this book after joining a Facebook group that set out to read all of the 10 books Greta Gerwig mentions in a Vulture article as her desert island books.I had no idea who Joan Didion was but by page twenty I had already started to really enjoy her writing. Not exactly the subject-matter-whatever, but her approach to them.I also got to think about Greta Gerwigs work a few times, and not only in the parts where she writes about driving in Sacramento, but also at a certain point
..........."Ancient marbles were not always attractively faded and worn. Ancient marbles once looked as they do here: as if dreamed by a mafia don." 76
Reading Didions essays is not unlike unearthing a time capsule you didnt know existed from a parallel universe that appears earthlike. Sure, there are words like California and feminism and Malibu but Didion does things to those familiar events and locales that changes them into an unique vision, a Didionism. Whether were standing with her on Oak Street below the Black Panthers HQ receiving a visual pat-down, retracing author James Jones steps along the army barracks in Honolulu or mesmerized
This undersung little book rates so highly with me that it very nearly earns my vote for the best writing by any modern-day American woman author. Period. [I would make it my #1 choice, but that honor goes to horror-authoress Shirley Jackson.] If we focus only on 20c. American nonfiction ; then it is certainly my #1 favorite title--beating out all works by all other females, and also all males (David McCullough, Norman Mailer, Hunter Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Gore Vidal, etc) as well. Did you hear
As was the case with Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem, certain aspects of The White Album seem hopelessly dated. I have no idea who Bishop James Pike is, for instance, and now that I've read about him I still don't really care. But another aspect of this collection irked me even more: Didion's all-encompassing weariness, her mild derision for seemingly everything and everyone with whom she crosses paths. Even in her younger years, did Joan Didion ever get excited about anything, ever,
We tell ourselves stories in order to live... We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the "ideas" with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.- Joan Didion, The White Album I wish I could dance like Fred
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