Joan Didion

First published in 1979, The White Album records indelibly the upheavals and aftermaths of the 1960s. Examining key events, figures, and trends of the era—including Charles Manson, the Black Panthers, and the shopping mall—through the lens of her own spiritual confusion, Joan Didion helped to define mass culture as we now understand it. Written with a commanding sureness of tone and linguistic precision, The White Album is a central text of American reportage and a classic of American autobiography.

Essays

The White Album

Macy HB

If I could believe that going to a barricade would affect man's fate in the slightest I would go to that barricade, and quite often I wish that I could, but it would be less than honest to say that I expect to happen upon such a happy ending.

We were that generation called “silent" but we were silent neither, as some thought, because we shared the period's official optimism nor, as others thought, because we feared its official repression. We were silent because the exhilaration of social action seemed to many of us just one more way of escaping the personal, of masking for a while the dread of the meaningless which was man’s fate.

At Berkeley in the Fifties no one was surprised by anything at all,

I suppose I am talking about just that: the ambiguity of belonging to a generation distrustful of political highs, the historical irrelevancy of growing up convinced that the heart of darkness lay not in some error of social organization but in man's own blood. If man was bound to err, then any social organization was bound to be in error. It was a premise which still seems to me accurate enough but one which robbed us early of a certain capacity for surprise.

The star map was, he had said, for when we were all gone and the dam was left. I had not thought much of it when he said it, but I thought of it then, with the wind whining and the sun dropping behind a mesa with the finality of a sunset in space. Of course that was the image I had seen always, seen it without quite realizing what I saw, a dynamo finally free of man, splendid at last in its absolute isolation, transmitting power and releasing water to a world where no one is.

One thing you will note about shopping-center theory is that you could have thought of it yourself, and a course in it will go a long way toward dispelling the notion that business proceeds from mysteries too recondite for you and me.

In New York the air was charged and crackling and shorting out with opinions, and we pretended we had some. Everyone in New York had opinions. Opinions were demanded in return. The absence of opinion was construed as opinion.

I have trouble maintaining the basic notion that keeping promises matters in a world where everything I was taught seems beside the point. The point itself seens increasingly obscure.

Why don't I keep a diary? Obviously, my changing everything into fiction is simply a means of concealing something from myself.... I shall keep a diary:

The astral discontent with actual lives, actual men, the denial of the real generative possibilities of adult sexual life, somehow touches beyond words.

All one's actual apprehension of what it is like to be a woman, the ireconcilable difference of it--that sense of living one's deepest life underwater, that dark involvement with blood and birth and death

women who had perhaps been conditioned to obscure their resentments even from themselves.

And then, at that exact dispirited moment when there seemed no one at all willing to play the proletariat, along came the women's movement, and the invention of women as a "class." One could not help admiring the radical simplicity of this instant transfiguration. The notion that, in the absence of a cooperative proletariat, a revolutionary class might simply be invented, made up, “named” and so brought into existence, seemed at once so pragmatic and so visionary, so precisely Emersonian that it took the breath away, exactly confirmed one’s idea of where nineteenth-century transcendental instincts, crossed with a late reading of Engels and Marx, might lead. 

But its curious vanity and irrelevance stay with me, if only because those qualities characterize so many of Hollywood's best intentions.

the public life of liberal Hollywood comprises a kind of dictatorship of good intentions, a social contract in which actual and irreconcilable disagreement is as taboo as failure or bad teeth, a climate devoid of irony.

Politics are not widely considered a legitimate source of amusement in Hollywood,

To understand what was going on it is perhaps necessary to have participated in the freeway experience, which is the only secular communion Los Angeles has.

we were never any better than we are and will never be any better than we were,

Here was a man who moved through life believing that he was entitled to forget it and start over, to shed women when they became difficult and allegiances when they became tedious and simply move on, dismissing those who quibbled as petty and "judgmental' and generally threatened by his superior and more dynamic view of human possibility.

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 tell ourselves stories in order to live

louv

“In what would probably be the middle of my life I wanted still to believe in the narrative and in the narrative’s intelligibility, but to know that one could change the sense with every cut was to begin to perceive the experience as rather more electrical than ethical.”

darby

We tell ourselves stories in order to live. 

aisha

"You don't look like a migraine personality," a doctor once said to me. "Your hair's messy. But I suppose you're a compulsive housekeeper." Actually my house is kept even more negligently than my hair, but the doctor was right nonetheless: perfectionism can also take the form of spending most of a week writing and rewriting and not writing a single paragraph.

wow!!! im joan didion-pilled. i hate most of the creative nonfiction genre because these people just keep talking about themselves but didion was so adept in placing herself in the zeitgeist, and she knows the zeitgeist very well. that last essay knocked my socks off.

Patricia K

wow!!! im joan didion-pilled. i hate most of the creative nonfiction genre because these people just keep talking about themselves but didion was so adept in placing herself in the zeitgeist, and she knows the zeitgeist very well. that last essay knocked my socks off.

personal library, bought from the strand

Didion's writing paves out a discourse of thought between the reader and her curious perspective of the world. To read this interpretation of life, culture and politics during the 60s and 70s, I gathered a disjointed belonging to that past as she did, and experienced her history, vivid, through her poetic narrative. Both sophisticated and honest, this vulnerable insight to Didion's mind is a true gift to the thoughtful readers. May this novel teach you to never take things for their surface level, like the dams of the world, there is always a story. 

Anya Tindale

the ”women’s movement” essay where she claims that feminists are victimizing themselves was my least favourite.

gingy :3

the ”women’s movement” essay where she claims that feminists are victimizing themselves was my least favourite.

 i very much liked this book

New York Times Bestseller: An “elegant” mosaic of trenchant observations on the late sixties and seventies from the author of Slouching Towards Bethlehem (The New Yorker). In this landmark essay collection, Joan Didion brilliantly interweaves her own “bad dreams” with those of a nation confronting the dark underside of 1960s counterculture. From a jailhouse visit to Black Panther Party cofounder Huey Newton to witnessing First Lady of California Nancy Reagan pretend to pick flowers for the benefit of news cameras, Didion captures the paranoia and absurdity of the era with her signature blend of irony and insight. She takes readers to the “giddily splendid” Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the cool mountains of Bogotá, and the Jordanian Desert, where Bishop James Pike went to walk in Jesus’s footsteps—and died not far from his rented Ford Cortina. She anatomizes the culture of shopping malls—“toy garden cities in which no one lives but everyone consumes”—and exposes the contradictions and compromises of the women’s movement. In the iconic title essay, she documents her uneasy state of mind during the years leading up to and following the Manson murders—a terrifying crime that, in her memory, surprised no one. Written in “a voice like no other in contemporary journalism,” The White Album is a masterpiece of literary reportage and a fearless work of autobiography by the National Book Award–winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking (The New York Times Book Review). Its power to electrify and inform remains undiminished nearly forty years after it was first published.

Lindy

I am, unfortunately, a contrarian by nature who is prone to disorienting illnesses. I'm beginning to see that is might be the main reason I enjoy Didion's work. The cover copy says that The White Album is about the aftermath of The Sixties (what does one do after the narrative of the American Dream has been rewritten in a foreign language?), and the title essay is, but there's an equal number of pieces about infrastructure and infrastructure as metaphor.

Volume highlights:
- "The White Album"
- "Good Citizens"
-"Notes Towards a Dreampolitik"
-"In Hollywood"
-"On the Morning after The Sixties"

Volume lowlight: "The Women's Movement," to which I cannot even grant points for originality or contrariness, as the idea that feminists are fragile snowflakes stuck in a state of arrested adolescent development while Real Adult Women get married to men and have babies is one that I hear/see approximately three times a week.

the first half of the book was really great. unfortunately the last half was a bit strenuous to get through. i did really love ‘in bed’! migraine sufferers unite! 

annalyse! 

This comprehensive edition brings together three seminal collections by legendary essayist and journalist Joan Didion: Slouching toward Bethlehem, White Album and Sentimental Journeys. WE TELL OURSELVES STORIES IN ORDER TO LIVE Looking for plausible stories as the Sixties are about to implode, Joan Didion sets out, notebook in hand, on a now-legendary journey into the hinterland of the American psyche: she kills time waiting for Jim Morrison to show up, parties with Janis Joplin, visits the Black Panthers in prison, watches a campus combust, dines with Tate and Polanski, buys dresses with Charlie Manson's girls, and gravitates towards biker movies 'because there on screen was some news I was not getting from the New York Times'. She and her reader emerge, cauterized, from this devastating tour of the myths and realities of that age of self-discovery into the harsh light of the morning after...

kayley

started with paperback, ended with audible…..i wanted to love this book so bad but i just could not get into it like her other work 💔💔

Laura Mauler

Joan Didion books should only be read when one is in Los Angeles, preferably when it is very hot and you have just finished driving around town. The one exception to this rule is "The Year of Magical Thinking", which must be read at night in a Manhattan apartment when you are alone, so that people do not see you cry, or do not see you not cry.

Lila R E

woahluv

the way joan didion speaks about the california mind during natural disasters and freak weather, lights passion in me as if I lived in california and knew these simultaneous feelings of paradise and hell

enya

some of the essays were kinda boring but maybe thats bc im not american and/or old
however Didion’s writing is <333333 and the way she observes the world is just super interesting

Joan Didion’s narrative is erratic, weird and loveable. I fell in love with this book from chapter one and it makes for such an amazing audiobook for car rides 

Elizabeth Denny

she’s so brill. also she uses desultory soooo much. due a reread honestly

lauren amitirigala

Andrew Louis

(Three stars because of the political essays and her hatred of carpool lanes)

Midori Kobayashi

Nick Gracilla

Didion died in December, aged 87. In my mind, she'll forever represent the voice of a generation, the kind of voice we don't foster anymore. No one can capture the spirit of a time — the ending of the 60s and its free-loving spirit, California in all its hope, its freeways, its unexpected communities rallying around fires, citizenship, and the fight for water — than Didion. She can take the oddest topics, like waterwork systems, and unwrap something so essential it is invisible, like the air we breathe. She led a complicated life: surrounded by the wildly successful of her generation; suffered from paralyzing migraines; suffered the loss of her husband and her child. She has left us a time capsule in her writing, in which the roots of today's culture draws. A must read.

Didion's concise, insightful prose rings clear in this collection of short stories centered around American life, especially in California, during the late 1960s. Her essays on women are particularly clearheaded, spearing second-wave feminist myths. No one can evoke the image and absurdities of an age, a mood, a movement, and a place like Didion. Highly recommended.

Amy Thibodeau

I really like Joan Didion and I enjoyed this book but didn't *love* it the way I did The Year of Magical Thinking. I think this is due in part to not relating much with the context in which she was writing, the 60s and 70s in California. Didion assumes a certain base knowledge level of her era and I was missing that a bit. 

Still there were a few stand out essays in this collection that I really enjoyed. 

Didion makes me want to be a better non-fiction writer.

Irem

Joan Didion ile tanışmam The Year of Magical Thinking ile olmuştu. Bir yası ve bir acıyı bu kadar salt ve yalın bir dil ile anlatması, kendisiyle yüzleşmesi beni büyülemişti. The White Album ise bambaşka bir konuda. 60’ların sonu ve 70lerin başını kapsayan Kaliforniya’nın tarihi ve siyaseti üzerine odaklanan denemelerden oluşuyor. Okurken çok tuhaf bir şekilde Kaliforniya’yı Joan Didion ile bütünleştiriyor insan. Çünkü kendisinin yazım tarzı, cümleleri çok farklı. Normalde hiç ilginizi çekmeyecek detayları lirik bir atmosferin içinde anlatıyor size. Şimdiye kadar hiç ilginizi çekmeyen su kemerleri bir anda öncelik sıralamanıza giriyor. Bazen de çok basit bir detayda, gözünüzün önünde duran noktalarını nasıl birleştiremediğinizi sorgulamanıza sebep oluyor. Bazı yazarlar vardır, hiç ilginiz olmayan konularda dahi sizi kitaba kilitleyip okuturlar. Joan Didion o yazarlardan birisi. Kaliforniya hiçbir şekilde bağ kurmadığım, ilgimi çekmeyen bölgelerden birisiyken, onunla keşfetmeye/öğrenmeye doyamadım. O yüzden bu ikiliyi artık zihnimde ayırmamın imkanı yok, ikisi de birbiriyle güzel.

it is hardly a relevatory observation that didion's writing tone is cool and chic, both somewhat sentimental and somewhat detached. it is - perhaps - the perfect journalistic (essayist) voice, certainly the perfect observationist voice.

there is a certain rhythm to her writing that draws you in and carries you away easily, smoothly. her strong intellect comes through incessantly while her prose remains sharp and accessible.

it is not difficult to understand why so many girls want to be joan didions and why so few in fact are.

it is hardly a relevatory observation that didion's writing tone is cool and chic, both somewhat sentimental and somewhat detached. it is - perhaps - the perfect journalistic (essayist) voice, certainly the perfect observationist voice.

there is a certain rhythm to her writing that draws you in and carries you away easily, smoothly. her strong intellect comes through incessantly while her prose remains sharp and accessible.

it is not difficult to understand why so many girls want to be joan didions and why so few in fact are.

Lia 

I don’t think I am smart enough for this book.

Grace M

Chiyeung lau

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”

Reading Joan Didion felt like reading for the first time. Every sentence was electric. Every page was a surprise. 

Didion writes with great clarity and compassion no matter the subject matter. Many times I found myself in shock and asking myself — how did she do that? How did she make that connection? How did she capture this moment with such tender dispassion? It was something I’ve never seen in non-fiction/autobiographical works.

“Quiet days in Malibu” was my favorite piece in the collection and it was the piece that prompted me to rush to the bookstore to buy The White Album. Highly recommended.

Arden Kowalski

Joan Didion is an absolutely fantastic writer. This collection of essays (I think it's my third of hers) is extremely compelling and kept me interested from front to back. The essays in the 'Women' section were my favourite, but several managed to make me feel a deep nostalgia for an era I did not actually live through. Some topics I could care less about (i.e. orchids, Reagan, Hawaii) but the clever prose and nice flow of the writing kept me reading. I swear, I could read Joan Didion's grocery lists. She's just that good of a writer, perhaps specifically because she's very self aware of it. There is a passage about location that particularly stood out to me:


  "Certain places seem to exist mainly because someone has written about them. [...] A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image..."


If this quote isn't enough to convince you that you absolutely must immerse yourself in The White Album—even or especially if you're not a fan of nonfiction—I'm not sure what will. It is a genius collection of essays that I thoroughly enjoyed. I'm beyond excited to read Play As It Lays when it comes in the mail, whenever that may be.

P.S. I would be remiss if I did not include my favourite quote from the collection in this review. It is 'writers are always selling somebody out,' which perhaps puts the opening phrase of the book into its intended context.

Jade Flynn

I / THE WHITE ALBUM - Overall 3/5.
II / CALIFORNIA REPUBLIC - Overall 3/5. Honourable mentions, Holy Water and Many Mansions.
III / WOMEN - Overall 4/5. Honourable mentions, The Women's Movement and Georgia O'Keeffe.
IV / SOJOURNS - Overall 4/5. Honourable mentions, In the Islands, In Bed and On the Road.
V / ON THE MORNING AFTER THE SIXTIES - Overall 2/5. Honourable mentions, Quiet Days in Malibu.

Will either be reading After Henry or A Year of Magical Thinking next.

The White Album Essays

Reviews

Highlights