The White Album

Beautifully written. Gave a wonderful and complete view of the period.

Her speaking on migraines.... wow! Beautifully said. I can't wait to read more from Joan. She writes like I think, about everything...

The White Album is a collection of essays written and published from the late sixties to early seventies. I guess they're supposed to "define a generation," that generation being the sixties. Essay topics range from race relations (the Black Panthers), Charles Manson, shopping malls, and travel. Most of the essays were published individually in publications like Esquire and The Saturday Evening Post.Taken out of context, many of the essays can be disorienting. Didion often writes from the perspective of an insider looking in, and not being an insider, I feel uninvited. For example, when she writes about James Albert Pike, I had no idea who he was, and after reading the essay, I still have no idea who he was. I had to look him up on Wikipedia. And in one rambling piece, she writes about lounging around in Hawaii in a way that's more tedious than sitting through an endless reel of vacation photos. The irony is that she writes "the point of sitting there [at a private beach of a tropical resort] was not at all exclusivity, as is commonly supposed on Waikiki, but inclusivity." Then she talks about all the Presidential children, society women, celebrities, and corporate millionaires stay there. I probably wouldn't read whatever publication these were originally in, and that's fine.But, with that out of the way, the personal essays are more readable, even though Didion is still obtuse here. I don't mean that in a negative way. We're asked how a writer "mak[es] something of those details." Didion seems to just present them to us and let us draw our own conclusions, but that's a style I appreciate. (In the essays mentioned last paragraph, my conclusion is "I don't care" and it's nice of Didion to let me come to that conclusion on my own.)I really enjoyed "Many Mansions," about the abandoned governor's mansion in California. I never knew about this at all, and Didion does a good job explaining the situation and the context. I liked "In Bed," which is about grappling with her migraine. I liked "On the Mall," about the rise of the shopping wall, which is especially sharp in contrast with today's decline of the shopping mall. And I enjoyed "On the Road" a piece with a double meaning of "Where are we heading?" Where is Didion going on her book tour? Where is the country heading at the end of a decade?The standout piece is the eponymous essay "The White Album." This is a sprawling piece of scenes from the Sixties, everything from Scientology, to political movements, to Jim Morrison and the Doors, to Linda Kasabian (a member of the Manson Family who lived in Milford, NH!) I liked this piece as the cultural time capsule it is. However, some of Didion's details are strange. When in the recording studio with Jim Morrison, she writes "I counted the control knobs on the electric console. There were seventy-six." This is in the middle of dialogue. I guess it's to signify how bored she is?Anyway, like any essay collection, this is hit or miss. I can see how a more coherent memoir work, like the The Year of Magical Thinking or Blue Nights, might be more compelling, mostly due to their personal nature.

A select collection of acclaimed and previously published works by celebrated nonfiction author and journalist, Joan Didion.Didion is best known for her fluid and elegantly understated prose, making it a treat to experience the nearly palpable, emotionally-charged dissonance of 1960’s Los Angeles through her sharp observations. She manages epitomizing the complex, mosaic of a period by using her impeccable eye for detail to draw stark parallels from personal experiences as significant events are unfolding all around her, imperative signs of the time. Instead of focusing on macroscale, she magnifies and unveils the overall seedy feeling of growing unrest through tender, poignant digressions in search of purpose behind it. She offers lyrical yet incredibly subtle, meaningful essays that carefully diffuse bits and pieces of context to the greater concept; the failure to find a narrative in her own life, and consequently, in American society. The ‘60’s have come and gone, leaving behind peculiar feelings lingering stagnant in the air surrounding the city as time passes on. She’s a fly on the wall and readers are there with her, in the Sunset Boulevard recording studio anxiously awaiting the arrival of Jim Morrison with the rest of The Doors. They’re at the Alameda County jail seated across the table from Huey Newton as he’s giving Eldridge Cleaver a personal statement regarding the Black Panther Party; they’re helping deliver a hand-chosen dress the morning of Linda Kasabian’s testimony for the Manson family murders. “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,” her writing style cultivates a sense of taking the reader along for the ride, making them feel like they were there to experience these intimate, quirky morsels in time right there alongside her.Didion’s rhythmic style is illuminated by collage storytelling, conveying the tentative state rearing 1960’s America in a timeless assortment.

An interesting work but perhaps not for the same reasons others find.She a year older, we were at Berkeley on overlapping years; here she raises the Sixties as a topic but there we depart.She tells why. “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.” p. 208.Here she is writing about one of the most turbulent times in recent memory but she projects no message other than the running commentary of certain personal occurrences, as do so many of these essays.Turbulent times, Movements of one kind or another forming across the country; conflict an almost daily occurrence for many but Joan is right. So what?The grace of her story telling is in her ‘words’ and the revelations that what is fake often the common place of what provokes our attention. That’s a lot.For Berkeley: ‘Free Speech,’ ‘Racial Equality’ brought Reagan as governor and what followed; not such ‘a happy ending,’ for those ‘at the barricade.’A wonderful ability to see through the haze to what matters, but slow in delivery sometimes.4.5 Stars

alternates between being great and dull. the woman’s movement is a standout. other 60s insights were pretty good as well.

She so often speaks for the of my generation.

Joan Didion never tells a story from the beginning, never enters the front door. She climbs in through the window, or down the chimney or on the back of a horse. But the reveals itself around her entrance, to our delight.

Didion escreve com fluidez de estilo e voz demarcada. Seus ensaios são um deleite aos olhos. Sem dúvida um dos grandes talentos da literatura americana.

One of the best books for young women. All women. All people. Joan Didion hits the mark on Feminism, Los Angeles, water, marriage, people...just a fabulous soul on paper. A breath of air in an entitled, silly world.

Unfortunately didn’t get to read this book as the font and print are appalling, do yourself a favour and don’t buy this version.Get the Harper Collins edition.

The prose is beautiful (obviously) and the cover feels nice, but the printing is terrible quality! Glad I didn’t buy this as a present.

She seems all knowing and judgemental but also useful and wry. An American icon.