I haven’t written anything for a few days, so I thought I would pass the time on this grey windy Thursday afternoon by writing something. Although the weather is quite miserable here, it is ridiculously mild for the time of year, 14 degrees C at the moment. I hope you have had a good Christmas. It has been very quiet for me. I have avoided the pub this week because of Omicron sweeping through the country. I think you would almost certainly catch it in crowded pubs.
I saw on the BBC News just before Christmas that the
American writer Joan Didion has died aged 87. I heard the news with a
feeling of sadness and regret. The regret was that although I have owned two of
her books, I didn't read them. When I said on my blog page a
couple of years ago that I had found a first edition of her book South And
West, From A Notebook, a good friend of mine recommended that I read The
Year Of Magical Thinking which was a Pulitzer Prize winning book inspired
by the death of her husband John Gregory Dunne and the severe illness of
her daughter Quintana. I never got around to reading it unfortunately.
However, to try and make amends, three days ago I found my paperback copy of Slouching Towards Bethlehem and because there wasn’t anything on the TV worth watching I started to read it. It is her first nonfiction book, published in 1968 and is a collection of essays that she had written for various magazines such as Vogue and The Saturday Evening Post. I was pleased to see that the title of the book comes from a poem The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats. (That poem also mentions a rough beast which is where I think Van Morrison might have got the song title Rough God Goes Riding from, but that is by the by) The book is divided into three sections, and so far I have read the first section called Life Styles In The Golden Land which is mainly about the authors experiences in California in the 1960s. The first essay concerns her coverage of the murder trial of a woman called Lucille Miller who was found guilty of killing her husband when he was asleep in a car. Her motive was the double indemnity insurance if death appears to be an accident. The wife of the man she was having an affair with also died in strange circumstances, but no action was taken against her lover. The article was originally published in 1966, so there is no account of what happened to Lucille Miller subsequently. The story intrigued me, so thanks to google and Wikipedia I found out that Lucille was released after seven years and died in 1986.
The next essay is called John Wayne, A Love Song and concerns her observations of John Wayne and Dean Martin filming The Sons Of Katie Elder. Joan said in her article in the September 15, 1965, edition of Vogue magazine, “This is an old-fashioned action Western. Very old-fashioned... In fact, I have a good time at movies like Katie Elder. I like the country and I like John Wayne and I like Dean Martin and I like gunfights. If you don’t, don’t bother”. Where The Kissing Never Stops is a story about Joan Baez and a school which she founded in California called The Institute for Non-Violence. Comrade Laski is about the American Communist Party. 7,000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38 is about Howard Hughes and what he represents. I think Joan Didion found these subjects interesting because by observing them she is wondering what they say about American society, or all western societies. Marrying Absurd looks at the crazy wedding chapels in places like Las Vegas and Reno Nevada. The title story Slouching Towards Bethlehem Joan Didion saw as the most important in this collection. She became acquainted with the kids of the counterculture of Haight-Ashbury San Francisco in 1967.
It is not a rosy picture that she paints. In the introduction she says that meeting these people proved that ‘things fall apart’. I wonder if she changed her view in later years. I know there were some really bad things that happened, such as when she witnessed a five-year-old child that had been given LSD, and then there was heroin and people like Charles Manson. I think despite the bad stuff, some good things did evolve from the hippy movement, such as Greenpeace, Friends Of The Earth, spiritual growth, vegetarianism, many other things and don’t forget, some great music. I have read 110 pages so far and have two sections of the book still to read, called Personals and Seven Places Of The Mind. I’ll try and finish the book in the next few days. I’m only sorry that it took the death of Joan Didion to prompt me to read her work. Happy New Year.
However, to try and make amends, three days ago I found my paperback copy of Slouching Towards Bethlehem and because there wasn’t anything on the TV worth watching I started to read it. It is her first nonfiction book, published in 1968 and is a collection of essays that she had written for various magazines such as Vogue and The Saturday Evening Post. I was pleased to see that the title of the book comes from a poem The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats. (That poem also mentions a rough beast which is where I think Van Morrison might have got the song title Rough God Goes Riding from, but that is by the by) The book is divided into three sections, and so far I have read the first section called Life Styles In The Golden Land which is mainly about the authors experiences in California in the 1960s. The first essay concerns her coverage of the murder trial of a woman called Lucille Miller who was found guilty of killing her husband when he was asleep in a car. Her motive was the double indemnity insurance if death appears to be an accident. The wife of the man she was having an affair with also died in strange circumstances, but no action was taken against her lover. The article was originally published in 1966, so there is no account of what happened to Lucille Miller subsequently. The story intrigued me, so thanks to google and Wikipedia I found out that Lucille was released after seven years and died in 1986.
The next essay is called John Wayne, A Love Song and concerns her observations of John Wayne and Dean Martin filming The Sons Of Katie Elder. Joan said in her article in the September 15, 1965, edition of Vogue magazine, “This is an old-fashioned action Western. Very old-fashioned... In fact, I have a good time at movies like Katie Elder. I like the country and I like John Wayne and I like Dean Martin and I like gunfights. If you don’t, don’t bother”. Where The Kissing Never Stops is a story about Joan Baez and a school which she founded in California called The Institute for Non-Violence. Comrade Laski is about the American Communist Party. 7,000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38 is about Howard Hughes and what he represents. I think Joan Didion found these subjects interesting because by observing them she is wondering what they say about American society, or all western societies. Marrying Absurd looks at the crazy wedding chapels in places like Las Vegas and Reno Nevada. The title story Slouching Towards Bethlehem Joan Didion saw as the most important in this collection. She became acquainted with the kids of the counterculture of Haight-Ashbury San Francisco in 1967.
It is not a rosy picture that she paints. In the introduction she says that meeting these people proved that ‘things fall apart’. I wonder if she changed her view in later years. I know there were some really bad things that happened, such as when she witnessed a five-year-old child that had been given LSD, and then there was heroin and people like Charles Manson. I think despite the bad stuff, some good things did evolve from the hippy movement, such as Greenpeace, Friends Of The Earth, spiritual growth, vegetarianism, many other things and don’t forget, some great music. I have read 110 pages so far and have two sections of the book still to read, called Personals and Seven Places Of The Mind. I’ll try and finish the book in the next few days. I’m only sorry that it took the death of Joan Didion to prompt me to read her work. Happy New Year.
