Joan Didion

I wish instead of a camera crew, MTV sent her and David Foster Wallace to document those "my super sweet 16" things.

Philip, I love you.

In general, I like her hundred-word sentences more than her five-word ones.

I've read *where I was from*. I was somewhat disappointed by it. I like the picture on the front of my copy.

I thought *play as it lays* was very poor, probably the worst Didion I've read.

I agree that adventure / unadventure looks like it plays out as maximal / minimal but I was somewhat trying to avoid that. Joyce is adventurous cos his style is (at times) flamboyant and expansive, yes, but also cos it changed so many times - that's truly an adventure, the Odyssey of style. Barthes also remade himself time and again - and his prose changed with it - but there is also a sense of reaching out in his prose, walking out on the tightrope if you like - which I suppose Morley shares. Morley also has daftness and namedropping, lots of things compacted together into a mix that people continually attack. (Another word that one wants to use is 'risk' in the writing, though again it might be approximate or even less helpful; none of these people was actually going to get hurt on account of their writing, save perhaps Joyce in a turbulent Europe.)

(reflection: when you set up any kind of principle ['I like un / adventurous writing'] it quickly becomes problematic in one way or another. In some ways I have come to suspect that the judgements we make are often about one writer at a time, sometimes even just one text, and not generalizable in the way we might think or want.)

It does seem that I am saying or concluding that writing in a minimal or plain way is likely to be relatively unadventurous, at the level of style. I think that's probably true. But it's true that plain writing can be good, for various purposes.

To corroborate that I don't like 'maxmimal' writing as such, I can recall that (to open another can of exploding sardines) I am largely on James Wood's side in the old hysterical realism debate. I don't think Pynchon's expansiveness necessarily makes for good fiction; Rushdie's makes for what feels to me like actively bad or at least deeply tiresome fiction.

Princess Tam Tam: Joan Baez? whose sister married Pynchon's best buddy at a wedding attended by Dylan?

(Joyce's first book of fiction was relatively very plain, indeed a model for plainness in the short story; moving beyond that was part of the adventure.)

(as I recollect it now, the effect of Didion's style in the *fiction* is not so much of plainness but more of mannerism - one which didn't come off for me. Perhaps there is a more genuine plainness in the non-fiction; which as I've often said, I think is better than the fiction of hers that I've read. But then perhaps I am the only one using the word 'plain' anyway.)

(Actually I come to think that 'mannerism' is a key word here, ie in some writers, sometimes, minimalism is not plain [as we might tend to assume it is] but mannered.

But talk of mannerism then I think raises the meta-question: why is mannerism bad? Some of us like some mannerisms in art. So again, articulating a general principle possibly doesn't get you very far.)

Ambrosia for Didion fans:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v26/n06/david-thomson/what-does-a-snake-know-or-intend

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3144/2671216059_f49c822c86.jpg

I thought *play as it lays* was very poor, probably the worst Didion I've read.

Ha, well, yes, I think we're going to want to shake hands and agree that men of society are often found to differ in their tastes - I consider Play It As It Lays one of the definitive works of modern fiction, on par with any of the finest novels of the 20th century

yeah, nothing beats play it as it lays for me -- i read part of it years ago and didn't get it and finally went through the whole thing in one sitting during a horrible, much-delayed, overnight flight a few months ago and it left me feeling a bit like i'd just witnessed a murder or something.

among other things, it's maybe the best description of what it's like to be clinically depressed that i've ever read.

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5145/5561062104_fcabc806cd.jpg

mmm pizza

whoa that book-bench thing is sick as hell! i hate like... holding pages... down...

man you gotta respect the pinefox & I am saying this from the heart. he knows he does not dig Joan Didion, but he continues to engage her. this is what actually being into literature/writing is about imo, instead of the hedonism that seems most prevalent to me, the view of reading as pure pleasure-seeking. I don't think there's anything at all wrong with reading what you love (except insofar as Catholicism impels me to condemn any pleasure-seeking to some extent) but I think really engaging stuff that puts you off is the mark of an actual lover of words so my hat is off to the pinefox.

yeah pinefox is one of the best

that is not pizza, surely

i think it is a pancake, is there a thread where americans laugh at the british idea of what constitutes a pancake yet

It looks like a crepe!

crepe is just french for pancake imo

crepe w/ lemon + sugar for sure

Yes, it is a pancake, which I think is possibly identical to the French crepe with lemon and sugar.

I don't dislike the US version of pancake but on balance I think I prefer ours (or the French). But I am now finding it hard to remember just what the US version is like. One way that I don't agree with the Americans is that they eat pancakes with meat; I think pancakes should be sweet.

I am very surprised and touched by those who have complimented me on my reading as a result of my pancake image.

just wanna say how awesome it is that pinefox, when confronted with people complimenting him on his pizza when he is actually clearly eating a crepe, continues to engage with them. doesn't just say, what kind of pizza has lemon on it.

a little lemon is actually great on pizza

just gonna wait for this thread to become a five thousand post trainwreck in response to that, pretty sure ILX is built on pizza fascism

"cheese and lemon actually go together really well. like those snacks you'd have at parties as a child; a little hunk of cheese and a little cube of lemon on a cocktail stick"

We could ask our friend Joan.

I am writing this because I want to say that there are many flavours of pizza. I have experienced several of them, and while this is not without its interest, it is not what I wish to express here. I wish to say that a little lemon can be acceptable on a pizza. I discovered this at a pizza restaurant in San Francisco. This may not seem important, but it has continued to seem important to me. I have been trying to understand why this should be so for the last twenty-two years, but I am not sure that I am any closer to the answer.

You made that up.

actually will be kinda bummed if interesting author discussion gets tabled for jokes

I think pastiche is a form of understanding.

http://maxsilvestri.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/pancakeonstick.jpg

stick it

actually will be kinda bummed if interesting author discussion gets tabled for jokes

― five gone cats from Boston (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Saturday, March 26, 2011 5:02 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Just got another Didion book in the mail actually. "The Book of Common Prayer." Probably won't be able to get to it for a few months though.

Give it a couple of decades.

I am writing this because I want to say that there are many flavours of pizza...

I just want to say how awesome this parody was, esp "a pizza restaurant in San Francisco".

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1979/oct/11/theyll-take-manhattan-3/

I found this rather brutal attack on Didion to be interesting and persuasive, even though I still mildly enjoy some of Didion's writing... I absolutly LOVE Harrison's writing since discovering this essay...

http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/103/didion-per-harrison.html

yeah thats talked abt upthread iirc

there's a bit of unfairness and misreading inherent in any hatchet job. didion herself once wrote a piece on woody allen's 'manhattan' that was just as unfair as the harrison piece. that essay is good at ridiculing didion's writing style and making fun of her as a person in a quasi-witty way (i guess -- i didn't actually find it funny), viz a viz:

Didion is like a latter-day Scarlett O'Hara: she will think about whatever it is she thinks about tomorrow when she dabbles her toes in her pool, all the while calling attention beguilingly to the hairshirt she has fashioned for herself . . . which may explain why so many male critics find her adorable.

but when i read something that drenched in self-regard, i feel like i'm learning more about the writer than the subject.

Can anyone find me a quote from Slouching? I can't find my copy. I think it's toward the beginning of the title essay and the basic thrust is that the pre-hippie generation was conformist and career-minded not because they were blindly accepting but because they were skeptical about alternatives.

but when i read something that drenched in self-regard

kind of describes the Lamp posting style tho no

^^^see we can do this all day

I have to say I enjoyed reading both Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album. Although I really didn't like how she wrote about Joan Baez in "Where the Kissing Never Stops". I just thought that was too much smoke up the ass.

I loved Run, River and Salvador but didn't care for Play It As It Lays at all-BLEHK. Haven't read more Didion.

When I compare Barbara Grizzuti Harrison's "Visions of Glory: A History and a Memory of Jehovah's Witnesses" and "Italian Days" to anything Didion wrote...I favor Harrison by far.

^^^see we can do this all day

well i certainly believe that you have nothing better to do, sure

fifty years from now Harrison is a name cloaked in absolute, total obscurity, remembered by no-one save her direct descendants, while people will still be reading Joan Didion for her tremendous sentences & unimpeachable tone and gift for pacing, rhythm...in short, her style

meet me here in fifty years and pay me if you want any action on this proposition

*looks at joan didion through smoke* xp

its mostly lol that u have a dogg in this fite, i mean since when can u read books?

idk i didnt think harrison's essay was particularly self-regarding (or funny?) & did a decent job sketching didion's empty-headed snobbery. i suppose she takes herself (or really her politics) quite seriously, & i can see mistaking that kind of self-seriousness for arrogance.

Harrison raises some pretty sharp and on-point criticisms of Didion there, to the point that I don't know if I will be able to experience Didion the same way next time I read her. At the same time, I think she makes her case a little too forcefully though and it weakens the argument.

idk i didnt think harrison's essay was particularly self-regarding (or funny?) & did a decent job sketching didion's empty-headed snobbery. i suppose she takes herself (or really her politics) quite seriously, & i can see mistaking that kind of self-seriousness for arrogance.

― neti pot, kombucha, how to die alone (Lamp), Wednesday, June 15, 2011 6:16 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wait who's clowning who about reading books

i can see how people read didion's self-conscious distance as "empty-headed snobbery" but to me it just reads as a manifestation of her own insecurity and depression

d-40 if i bow my head in defeat now, will you just stop posting on this subboard?