White Album (FSG Classics)

The praise gets heaped on Slouching Towards Bethlehem (as well it should), but after finishing The White Album, there is no doubt in my mind they are equals in every way - an eloquent, painstaking, timeless collection of one unexpected, evocative observation after another. The appeal of Didion's writing is often to glimpse the author underneath her thick and specific veils of details, to marvel at the way her specifics are often more telling about her than about what she's writing - her own sense of dislocation amidst the silly late-60's music industry, her heartbreak within a charred orchid greenhouse, her rather endless defensiveness of California in Hollywood board rooms and Beverly Hills restaurants. In that, my favorite piece in this flawless collection is the 3-page description of Georgia O'Keefe: "'The men' believed it impossible to paint New York, so Georgia O'Keefe painted New York. 'The men' didn't think much of her bright color, so she made it brighter. The men yearned toward Europe so she went to Texas." It's a proud and bold description of a proud and bold woman, but what it really is is a treatise on what it means to be inspired and emboldened by the work and life of someone who came before you. A similar piece could be written on the uncompromising career of Didion, and it could be written following any essay in The White Album.

Personally I love Joan Didion. I think this affects my enjoyment and even fascination with all of her work, including “The White Album”. Again, personally this was a five star reading experience for me. However I feel quite positive that this work will not appeal to every reader. It very much depends on what one is looking for… Joan Didion writes both fiction and non fiction. She wrote very interesting and introspective essays about the sixties and seventies. This work is a series of non fiction essays, largely about California during that timeframe. Of all of the works of Joan Didion that I have thus far read, this work reminds me most of “Sloughing Towards Bethlehem”, which remains my favorite non fiction work of Joan Didion. I always read Joan Didion when I have a chance to sit quietly in solitude with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. I clear my head of all distractions. I then sort of lose myself in her thoughts and words. If my mind begins to drift I take a break. If I need to look up references and persons I do so. If it takes me a month to read a work such as this, and it did, so be it… Joan Didion has always been something of an enigma to me. All photographs of her have seem to have the same look on her face. I know she had a husband and child die within approximately one year of each other. That part of her life is documented in “The Year of Magical Thinking”. In this work being reviewed Joan Didion speaks of suffering throughout her life from severe migraines. I either never knew that or it failed to register with me. I can’t help but wonder if facts such as that affect bother countenance and her writing. I can tell you that I am enthralled by Joan Didion, but I have no idea if you will be. In summary, once again I loved this work by Joan Didion. I am attempting to read all of her work in chronological order. However I definitely need a break between her works and it will take several years to complete this project. She is simply too deep and requires too much thought. I never read Joan Didion to the exclusion of all other literature. I never read her work when I am rushed. I always sip, I never gulp. In the event that it matters, I did prefer “Sloughing Towards Bethlehem” to “The White Album”. Thank You for taking the time to read this review.

Well written, historic for this era. I enjoyed the book, made me feel like I stepped backwards in her life.

Didion’s White Album confirms what I’ve subconsciously known my entire life: the Sixties were chaotic. Vietnam, Kent State, Black Panthers, Jim Morrison, Charlie Manson murders at Spahn Ranch, a sequence of events that shaped the mood of a generation. Didion’s collection is a trek through the a tumultuous era, spattered with iconic figures, writers, actors, producers, and luminaries from the women’s movement, the brilliance of Doris Lessing and Georgia O’Keefe. For the reader who lived through the 1960s, The White Album is a keepsake, for the outsider it is a collection of essays capable of transporting one into the fray of those chaotic times.

Some of her essays, which are personal critiques of notable events and people of the sixties/seventies, are amusing, accessible, straightforward satirical/ironic commentaries. An essay on a born-again pentacostal group in California is one such amusing, smart description of people who, to Didion, suffer from a noticeable lack of common sense and critical judgement. Average Americans can enjoy and chuckle at that essay. But in other essays, such as a critique of the womens' movement, she clubs the reader over the head with a barrage of professorial words like "sententious" and "didactic", "Emersonian". I continually was thinking "what does that mean? What is Emersonian, what does sententious mean? In that essay (womens' movement) she write like an Oxford professor of philosophy or ancient classic literature. In my opinion, it's never necessary to intellectually bully people with arcane, seldom used academic words. Every idea can be clearly, precisely expressed using common every-day language. So, for my taste, Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson were more pleasant and fun to read, for satirical, insightful commentaries on American culture. For example, Tom Wolfe's "A Man in Full", or "Bonfire of the Vanities".

Joan Didion’s title piece is worth the price of admission. This is classic piece of American writing with a definite slant toward the late 1960s; as the title suggests. What is really striking is how sixty years later, people are still trying to write like her.

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.

Excellent author a fabulous book

I've never had a book like this, pages were literally falling out as I was reading. The cover also got creased very quickly.

I love short essays and this book may be one of a kind. Immersing myself in how life looked back in the 70s, 80s, a truly delightful reading

Ms Didion is a fine mind with a felicitous command over English. A delight to read. The white album is her defining piece!

Brilliant!

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