Where I Was From by Joan Didion

Where I Was From Reviews

• 
  Orsodimondo

  GIOIA E DISPERAZIONE
  
  
  Foto di famiglia in un esterno: Joan al centro, davanti a lei la piccola Quintana Roo, il marito John è quello dietro a tutti.
  
  Il titolo originale Where I Was From diventa Da dove vengo, e ci sta. Quello che stona, che non va bene, che non serviva, che è solo mossa di marketing, è il sottotitolo: Un’autobiografia.
  Sottotitolo che in originale non esiste.
  E non esiste perché questo libro non è affatto un’autobiografia. Ma è proprio quello che recita il titolo: una ricerca, o inchiesta, un ragionamento, un’elaborazione sul luogo di provenienza della Didion, la California, sull’essenza di quella terra, sull’eredità che comporta.
  
  
  
  Ora, anche se è vero che nessuno è più bravo di Joan Didion a intersecare e intrecciare la sua storia personale con la Storia generale, quella del mondo, quella di tutti gli altri, rimane il fatto che queste pagine sono un’autobiografia solo con grosso impiego di fantasia.
  
  
  Albert Bierstadt: Among the Sierra Nevada. 1868. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC.
  
  La prima parte parla dei pionieri, del Donner Party, parla di migranti.
  La seconda è dedicata alle città industriali del sud California (a est di Los Angeles), nate dal nulla, prolificate e diventate floride, poi entrate in crisi con la crisi dell’industria aerospaziale e delle commesse militari.
  
  
  Thomas Kinkade: The Mountains Declare His Glory.
  
  Dopo, si parla di come questo stato considerato il più libero tra tutti quelli della Land of Freedom, considerato lo stato con regole sociali meno rigide che nel resto del paese, più tollerante delle differenze, sia anche quello col maggior numero di ricoveri forzati per malattia mentale, spesso presunta, molto spesso internamenti a tutti gli effetti, e quello dove si esegue l’80% delle sterilizzazioni per patologie riconducibili in qualche modo al disturbo mentale.
  Lo stesso stato dove l’edilizia ha avuto un boom con la costruzione di nuovi carceri, costruire nuovi carceri trasformato in oggetto del desiderio per diverse medio-piccole comunità (il sindacato della polizia penitenziaria in California conta 29.000 iscritti: alle elezioni per governatore del 1998 ha finanziato la campagna elettorale con cinque milioni di dollari, due dei quali come contributo al candidato vincitore, Grey Davis).
  
  
  Lakewood, California.
  
  Alla fine, la quarta parte, che è la più breve, compare qualche ricordo: della madre, del padre, qualche flash del passato, pur consapevoli che
  non esiste davvero un modo per fare i conti con tutto ciò che perdiamo.
  
  
  
  Questo libro è stato pubblicato nel 2003. La figlia e il marito di Joan Didion erano ancora vivi: ma alla fine di quell’anno, Quintana Roo entrò in coma (dal quale uscì settimane dopo) e la sera del 30 dicembre John Gregory Dunne morì d’infarto.
  La madre di Joan morì il 15 maggio del 2001, due settimane prima di compiere 91 anni. Il pomeriggio del giorno prima madre e figlia residente a New York s’erano parlate per telefono e l’anziana aveva riattaccato la telefonata lasciando una frase a metà e senza saluti e commiati di alcun tipo come sua abitudine, educazione, tradizione. Neppure un semplice ciao: Era la sua soluzione per i momenti in cui l’emozione rischiava di venire a galla.
  
  
• 
  Eric

  So, so good. Family memoir, social history, contemporary reportage and literary criticism (of Frank Norris, Jack London, and Joan Didion) in perfect proportions, synthesized in her sad and piquant prose, her "astringent lyricism." A patient autopsy of the myths of the American West, of Progress. I want to shelve this with the Bridge novels and Son of the Morning Star; Didion and Connell children of the Plains and the Far West, with their doubts and dry wits, sly siblings winking to each other across the mid-century WASP dinner table. (The grandparents settled this west for what reason, at what cost, to establish what kind of culture?) And when she's funny she makes me smile all day:
  
  

  A Thomas Kinkade painting was typically rendered in slightly surreal pastels. It typically featured a cottage or a house of such insistent coziness as to seem actually sinister, suggestive of a trap designed to attract Hansel and Gretel. Every window was lit, to lurid effect, as if the interior of the structure might be on fire.

  
  
  Of her nonfiction, this is my second-favorite, just behind The White Album.
  
• 
  Anne B

  I was raised in California, still live here, and have read Didion all my life. I was thinking of her words on the Santa Ana winds when I finished this book, while a firebug in Los Angeles took advantage of the hot winter weather to set cars on fire across the Westside. Ain't no crazy like a California crazy, I thought; but Joan says it better.
  
  We can divide Didion's work into phases: investigative, fictional, and her late work, mostly memoir. I reject the idea that her earlier stuff is somehow stronger: here and in The Year Of Magical Thinking her prose is contemplative and introspective, but also muscular, the way ballet can be.
  
  I love Joan Didion. I love her way of writing toward her meaning, and I'm thrilled when she gets there, because her words (and her years) have taken her to a view no one else can describe. In this work, she begins to bind together what it means to live in California: without agenda, standing clear of all attachments her life has offered. Those attachments are many, but she refuses to inhabit them.
  
  There's grace in Didion's work: the grace of clarity and distance. It's been decades, and still no one does this better.
• 
  Darwin8u

  “Discussion of how California has 'changed,' then, tends locally to define the more ideal California as that which existed at whatever past point the speaker first saw it: Gilroy as it was in the 1960s and Gilroy as it was fifteen years ago and Gilroy as it was when my father and I ate short ribs at the Milias Hotel are three pictures with virtually no overlap, a hologram that dematerializes as I drive through it.”
  ― Joan Didion, Where I Was From
  
  “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."
  ― Joan Didion, The White Album
  
  "California belongs to Joan Didion."
  ― Michiko Kakutani
  
  
  
  Probably 3.5★. Not going to review it much tonight. I liked it in parts, loved it in parts, felt let down by parts, but graded against her other greats (
  The Year of Magical Thinking,
  Slouching Towards Bethlehem,
  The White Album), it just doesn't quite hold up. Feels a bit cobbled together, but I'm probably just being picky and petty.
  
  In a 4-part book Didion explores the history and narrative of California, and like she is want to do, she kinda clears the table of myths, fables, and stories that people have constructed around place/time. She loves California, but recognizes in that great big state a bunch of contradictions and flaws that seem to be varnished over every couple of years. She loves California but wants it to be loved WITH the flaws, not with the bullshit. This involves a bit of journalistic deconstruction, revisionism, playful teasing, family history, re-reading of her own past writings, thoughts about death and family, property and family, and always, always California (especially Sacramento).
  
  Anyway, mediocre, messy, meditative Didion is still pretty damn fantastic.
  
  
• 
  Juan Naranjo

  Llevaba tiempo queriendo leer a esta autora y, como intuía que me iba a gustar, no me preocupé en investigar demasiado su obra y me lancé a leer el primero de sus libros que cayó en mis manos. La sorpresa ha sido rotunda. Y, desde luego, más que positiva.
  
  Porque este «De dónde soy» del título no presenta una historia autobiográfica ni una novela familiar sino un rotundo ensayo sobre la historia del estado de California. No hablo de un ensayo novelado, ni de una historia desde la perspectiva de la autora: hablo de un ensayo profundo, bien documentado y lleno de datos. Es un texto muy buen construido y con una gran capacidad analítica que hará las delicias de cualquier enamorado de la geografía física y humana, la historia, la economía, la sociología, la etnografía… Un rotundo manual para saber todo lo que hay que saber sobre California, que no se ahorra detalles y que, además, está explicado con buen gusto y oficio.
  
  Claro que hay alguna parte que se hace más densa que otras. Claro que cuando lo lees te gustaría saber más de la historia familiar de la autora (que apenas se intuye entre los acontecimientos históricos). Pero todo eso no importa cuando te cuentan de una forma tan visual y bien argumentada cómo ese gigantesco territorio «virgen» pasa a ser una tierra de ranchos, un depósito de energías combustibles, una enorme base aeroespacial y, al final, un gran negocio neoliberal que especula con el suelo en forma de bienes inmobiliarios.
  
  He aprendido una barbaridad. Y me ha encantado que la historia de California me la cuente una californiana. Ahora, por supuesto, quiero leer mucho más de Joan Didion.
• 
  Lori

  Joan Didion discusses her family and their migration to California. She separates fact from fiction in the stories told, not only about her own family, but also about her native California. Exploring bits and pieces from the 19th century to 21st, readers are treated to well-written essays showing the spirit of true Californians.My favorite essays, of course, were those exploring her own family or which included information on the family of her subjects. Thomas Kincade was the starting point of one of her essays. This one appealed to me because our family usually puts together a puzzle at Christmas, and it is often one based on a Thomas Kincade print. This was my introduction to Didion, but I hope to explore some of her other writings as time permits.
• 
  Hank Stuever

  In a way, everything Didion wrote led to this book. I think it's one of her best and I sort of consider it the end of the trail, even though her biggest publishing success ("The Year of Magical Thinking") was just around the corner. This is Didion's elegiac farewell to California, going back over her life and work and the pioneer myths onto which she had projected so much of her core narrative sensibilities. There's a real scope to it -- collecting a New Yorker piece about the teen sex posse in Lakewood, Calif., and some other California-related pieces for the NYRB -- and then some very good personal work near the end, on the death of her mother, which is in a way more powerful than the grief story told in "Magical Thinking." "The White Album" is my favorite Didion book, but this one is a close second.
• 
  Eibi82

  Con Joan Didion no soy objetiva. Es una de mis escritoras favoritas. Me gusta tanto en novela como en ensayo, aunque reconozco que es con este último donde me gana.
  Los que sueñan el sueño dorado es una recopilación de artículos con una temática de los más variada: reflexiones personales, crónicas de asesinatos, una canción de amor a John Wayne, un homenaje a Georgia O'keefe, incluso habla del período presidencial de Ronald Reagan. Ha sido muy bonito reencontrarme con la Joan íntima de El año del pensamiento mágico y a su vez, descubrir a la escritora divertida, mordaz e incisiva, incluso a la reivindicativa en esta recopilación.
  
  Ella hace que escribir parezca fácil. Tiene una manera de contar tan cercana que atrapa; te hace partícipe del relato hasta el punto de creer que Joan Didion te habla a ti.
  Y en mitad de toda esa conversación íntima y personal, no puedo evitar recordar a esas otras escritoras que me hacen sentir en casa: Olivia Laing y su Ciudad solitaria , Maggie Nelson y sus Argonautas, Patti Smith con M Train o mi querida Margaret Atwood en La maldición de Eva. Todas ellas mujeres escritoras, con una voz única, diversa y carismática.
  Tras leer este sueño dorado, tampoco me olvido de Sara Smythe, uno de los personajes literarios que más me han marcado este año lector.
  
  Vidas distintas entrelazadas por un mismo hilo conductor: las palabras y la escritura como catalizador para contar historias, ya sea la propia o la ajena. Y sí, esta vez, el relato se cuenta en voz alta.
  Qué suerte leerlas y qué bonito ha sido encontrarlas.
• 
  Gabril

  "Questo libro è una ricerca sui miei equivoci circa il luogo e il modo in cui sono cresciuta, equivoci che riguardano l'America così come la California, fraintendimenti e malintesi a tal punto insiti nella persona che sono diventata che ancora oggi mi riesce di affrontarli solo per vie indirette."
  
  Non esattamente una biografia, dunque. Un viaggio, piuttosto.
  Un'indagine antropologica, sociale e anche familiare. La storia dei pionieri che per primi abitarono la valle dell'Eden, nutrendola con le loro speranze e le loro illusioni; il cammino eroico verso la Sierra Nevada, prima che inesorabile scenda la neve; la progressiva trasformazione dello spirito dell'Ovest e "l'alterazione dell'immaginario" entro cui è affondato il sogno californiano... tutto questo si intreccia con la vita, il sentimento e la storia personale di Joan, dei suoi antenati e dei suoi genitori.
  Raccontata come sempre con la sua voce dal timbro unico e inconfondibile.
  Il suo realismo, la sua lucidità, la sua stoica amarezza.
  
  Perché "non esiste davvero un modo per fare i conti con tutto ciò che perdiamo".
• 
  leah

  2.5
  instead of a memoir, this is more of a historical account of didion’s heritage and ancestry in california. i can imagine this would be interesting to some, particularly native californians who would enjoy learning about the history of their home state, but unfortunately it wasn’t what i was looking for, nor what i was expecting due to this book being labelled as joan didion’s ‘first ever memoir’, which it isn’t. if you’re looking for a memoir by joan didion, i’d highly recommend
  the year of magical thinking. but there’s no denying that didion is a fantastic writer, and i enjoyed the last 50 or so pages the most.
• 
  Marica

  Mollezze di un'educazione molle
  Titolo disonesto dell'editore italiano, Joan Didion non parla della sua vita familiare: riflette sul suo paese d'origine, la California, con la severità che qualche volta si riserva a quello che ci è caro. Il suo libro d'esordio, Run River, trattava in parte lo stesso argomento in forma di romanzo e si concludeva negli anni sessanta.
  I pensieri dell'autrice si sviluppano in modo piacevolmente vario, perchè non ha una tesi da imporre. Comincia smontando un discorso che aveva preparato per la scuola quando era ragazzina e parlava della California come della terra dell'oro raggiunta dagli eroici pionieri, gli antenati gloriosi dell'epopea del West. Crescendo, si era documentata e aveva realizzato che si trattava di gente che a un certo punto aveva interrotto la vita precedente e si era buttata in un'avventura incerta, che qualche volta aveva portato a una vita migliore; molte altre, aveva pagato un prezzo altissimo, lasciando per la via cassettoni di palissandro, argenteria, corpi seppelliti alla meglio.
  I discendenti dei pionieri credono che tutto sia loro dovuto, in memoria degli antichi colonizzatori :“americani del vecchio ceppo” per dirla con Jack London. Idea repubblicana che supporta il triste rifiuto della gente di origine asiatica, neri, italiani, messicani e altri estranei meno bianchi di loro.
  Un altro argomento sul quale Joan Didion infierisce è il declino dei valori manifestato in una comunità del comparto aerospaziale, a sua volta in fase di smantellamento. Qui le famiglie di un gruppo di tangheri di 16-18 anni , sedicenti Spur Posse, difendono i loro bravi ragazzi dalle accuse di stupro, poiché la scuola con le lezioni di educazione sessuale mette loro in testa delle idee: le famiglie dei bulli dicono sempre cose imbarazzanti. Pare che la comunità ritenesse la cittadina un posto ottimale, dato il numero di attività ricreative disponibili, tutte a base di palla: baseball, basket, football, tutti avevano la loro palla. Pare infatti che nelle High Schools americane i meriti sportivi diano crediti spendibili per la promozione: in questo caso però “mens sana in corpore sano” non sembra funzionare.
  Joan Didion mi fa sorridere col discorso della decadenza della gioventù dovuta alle mollezze di un'educazione molle; lo dicevano anche gli autori latini a proposito del passaggio dalla Repubblica all'Impero, e probabilmente avevano anche ragione.
• 
  M. D. Hudson

  Joan Didion strikes me as being one of the smartest writers in America, with a firm but quiet authority that makes me trust her absolutely. She is also probably the last social commentator in America who is not shouting with little rivulets of mad-dog spittle flying from the corners of her mouth.
  
  Sometimes the book was truly thought-changing for me in not only how I regard California, but how I regard the whole westward expansion aspect of the USA. I live in Fort Wayne, IN – once the hot center of the military-trading frontier and characterized by all of the usual boondoggles, chicanery, and rapaciousness. To see this carried on to the Golden Gate was a bit depressing – in fact, by the time we had “expanded” to California, the federal apparatus had become very sophisticated and prevalent in a way that dwarfs the knee-britches and coonskin cap crudities of Indiana settlement. Damn the railroads. And aero-space. And, er, and thank God for them too, I guess. Whence goeth California, so goeth the country?
  
  Ah, but I digress. One of my favorite moments in this book was when one of my favorite military historians, Victor Davis Hansen, a Californian like Didion, and like Didion the product of wealthy pioneer ranch-owning stock, came under Didion’s pitiless gaze. Hansen has long rhapsodized about how he still lives on and to some extent works the ranch, contrasting his rooted-to-the-soil rootedness with the shallow narcissistic lives lead by other Americans. Because of my enormous respect for him, I always took all these things he said as gospel. But Didion calmly and rationally takes Hansen’s supposed pioneering spirit and reduces it to a smoldering pile of historical wishful-thinking. California is and pretty much always has been a heavily subsidized, self-satisfied and self-delusional product of a whole bunch of Federal interference --dam-building and corporate gimmees (first the railroads, then military-avionics, crop subsidies, etc.). The Donner Party had to eat their dead (and not-quite-dead-yets) but once they got to the Golden State, things got a lot easier for many of them. This is a gross simplification of Didion’s calm handling of facts. I was uncomfortable to see Hansen get exposed like this…he rebutted, I presume, somewhere…but Didion did it without getting shrill for even a moment. And her logic, and her facts, seemed dead-on.
  
  I mean to read more of Didion’s work…my only (wildly unfair) complaint about her is that she often writes about stuff I don’t give a tinker’s damn about (California, for instance – although she made me interested finally. But I had to stop reading her book on Miami, so absolutely bogged down and bored I became in the Cuban expat political scene). Sort of like the way the New Yorker’s best writer, Joan Accocela (I spelt that wrong, I know) covers, mostly, dance! But good writing is its own reward. Didion is a master. There is this weird melancholy aspect to her prose that is unique to her – it lends a gravity to what she writes that is missing in that of most other cultural commentators. She’s one of the few famous contemporary writers I would like to know.
  
• 
  Luna Miguel

  Me ha gustado mucho, sobre todo los textos escritos en los 60 y 70, me parecen mucho más atrevidos que los últimos de la selección. Pero su voz es alucinante. Estoy deseando leer "El año del pensamiento mágico". Sí, sí. Muy fan.
• 
  Erik

  Joan Didion's Where I Was From is a reflection on her past life in California that will resonate with anyone who holds on to connections with the past.
  
  The state of California was founded by a rough-and-tumble collections of settlers who fought the Natives and took their land. From the birth of the state, corporations have carved it up and turned it into fields for capitalist harvest. First the Southern Pacific Railroad company then the aerospace industry, each partnered with the federal government's funding of dams and levees to direct water to the desert and to place California as one of the largest corporate agricultural producers in the world. And as each of these companies would leave the state - and leave a path of harm and destruction in their wake - the Californians left behind inevitably feel nostalgia for a California that no longer - and quite frankly never did - exists.
  
  Where I Was From is presumably about California but its meaning will touch even those with no connection to the state. Didion once again writes to remind us that nostalgia can be a tempting method of seeing the world but it clouds our view of the present and rewrites the news of the past. Nostalgia tells us that the reason for societal decline is increased crime rates and social decay when in reality these are but symptoms of a larger capitalist exploitation and failure. The resonance of this book is incredible; read it.
• 
  talia ♡

  it's been too long since i've reread the bible of california written by (arguably) the greatest californian
  
  (i respect her life in new york but she will always be my california prophet <3)
• 
  Nic

  This was a tough book to get through, often dull, frequently depressing. Didion, a Sacramento-area native, examines the myth of the Calfornia Dream. She provides ample evidence that state residents are self-deluded and that their values frequently contradict (ie: believing we are anti-government mavericks, yet being reliant on the DOD for so many jobs). The book is well-researched and accounts of the media coverage of the "Spur Posse" and the number of prisons and insane asyllums in the state (that the penal system frequently received more funds than public schools!) are shocking and disturbing. Ultimately, this is a sad wake-up call for those who believe Calfornia is somehow immune to the nation's ills or has been "ruined" by "outsiders." The Golden Past is only real in a reminiscier's memory.
• 
  Andrea Vergara

  Me aferré a este libro en el final del 2020 como si fuera una biblia y me sostuvo firme. Didion duda de todo, lo observa todo y lo separa en capas delgadas para finalmente exponerlo sin vueltas.
• 
  lucaswyl

  An engaging, grounded exploration of California's history and how it influences the identity of everyone born here. No way that Lady Bird isn't partially inspired by it IMO.
• 
  quinn

  “There was no believable comfort I could offer my mother: she was right. They were all old men and it was all San Jose.”
  
  of course i loved it but probably my least favorite Didion —the early essays feel a bit disparate and unfocused, full of names and dates. ultimately comes together, however, as her analysis of California switches from pure history to an understanding of where the state is heading (and who it is leaving behind). final chapters regarding her mother make for a strong companion to The Year of Magical Thinking. naturally i cried.
• 
  Andrea

  El mes pasado terminé esta suerte de selección de artículos y reportajes y pude constatar algunos aspectos: 1. Didion es una estilista obsesiva; macera el lenguaje, lo cocina con un mimo que contradice a todos aquellos que emparentan su narrativa con la de Hunter S. Thompson. 2. Todo lo que escribe me interesa: amor propio, fracaso, John Wayne, la importancia de tener un cuaderno de notas, contracultura, migraña, medios de comunicación, violaciones, violencia política… 3. Pongo ojitos a toda la obra de Joan Didion. Probablemente, nada de lo que diga a propósito de sus aportaciones al periodismo y a la literatura será imparcial. Pero poco importa. Creo que todo es mucho mejor cuando ella está entre nuestras lecturas y nos ofrece aquello que necesitamos para comprendernos: «Aquel fue el año, mi vigésimo octavo año, en que descubrí que no todas las promesas se iban a cumplir, que hay cosas que de hecho son irrevocables y que a fin de cuentas todo había contado: hasta la última evasión y postergación, hasta la última equivocación y la última palabra, todo».
• 
  Sarah

  During college, I heard Joan Didion read from this book. She is a miniscule person with giant glasses, a quiet voice, and a knack for putting words together that really blows me away. I finally got around to reading it. Joan Didion could write a book about plastic bags and I'd still read it, and still probably like it. This topic wasn't something I particularly give a damn about (California history), but her writing is so elegant, understated and thoughtful that I liked it for form over substance
• 
  Belensays

  Didion puede hablar con la misma brillantez del amor romántico que de los asesinatos producidos en El Salvador. Te puede contar porqué es importante escribir un cuaderno de notas igual que analiza como el caso de una violación de una mujer de éxito de NY a manos de unos chavales negros es una propaganda perfecta para vender el sueño americano. Es la mejor escritora de nuestro tiempo.
• 
  Jorge Morcillo

  Agradable recorrido por la historia de California.
  Didion se vale de la colonización, el desarrollo, la literatura y su propio bagaje familiar para levantar un fresco dividido en cuatro partes. De las cuatro mi preferida es la última, que es muy cortita y habla del final de la vida de sus padres.
  Sin lugar a dudas un libro ameno de una escritora muy recomendable. No es lo mejor que he leído de ella, ni mucho menos, pero deja una grata impresión.
• 
  disamistade

  3.5. Non è affatto quello che mi aspettavo. È un'altra storia. È appunto "da dove vengo", la California e le sue contraddizioni. Mi aspettavo tutt'altro, tratta in inganno da quell'autobiografia nel titolo, ma mi sono trovata davanti alle miserie e alle luci di questo posto, una terra di cui non sapevo nulla, in un lavoro di ricerca e studio incredibili.
  
  La quarta parte è meravigliosa, Didion in purezza (quella non ha stelle che bastino).
• 
  Naim

  "It was only Quintana who was real."
• 
  Alison

  How does she do it? How does Didion masterfully write in so many different genres at once?
  
  A handful of pages into this book, I thought it was going to be a historical chronicle of family history. But then it was literary criticism. And then it was trenchant cultural commentary. And then it was almost poetry. Around page seventy-five, I realized that I wouldn't be able to place the literary form. This genre-bending tale transcends them all. Because it's not just a little bit of this and a little bit of that; Didion creates something far greater than the sum of its parts.
  
  So relevant. So quotable. So poignant.
  
  (There is something I'm mulling over in the wake of reading this book, which has to do with the narratives that we tell children. More than once, Didion suggests that she was subject to revisionist and idealized versions of historical epochs and events. This is surely the case. And she is right to feel the sting of that realization as an adult, just as she is right to come full circle by means of nuance. But I'm wondering what version of the settling of California, of the state's identity, Didion might expect children to be able to handle. What, to her mind, would be a better way to bring children into the history of the place, without overburdening them with adult themes? How does she envision a history lesson that doesn't create cynics or induce identity crises in tweens? I'm pretty sure I should write her and ask while I still have the chance.)
• 
  Colette

  This took me a while to get into but I liked it in the end. I bought it at dog eared books in San Francisco and I wish I had read more of it before/during my visit to California. It’s really interesting, and I especially liked the chapters about the underbelly of the military contracts paying for everything in the California suburbs. I also liked the stories about pioneers, I feel like not many pioneer narratives are that unromantic. The book was was pretty meandering and I never really knew where we were headed next, so even though it is a pretty short book it took me three weeks to read. It was also my first Joan Didion and I wonder if it’s more appealing to people familiar with her style and biography.
• 
  Fantasymundo

  Pero si por algo destaca la mirada de Didion, sobre otras cosas, es su gusto por lo pequeño y lo insignificante. Mientras fue en su generación dónde comenzó a forjarse esa obsesión -ya antropológica- por la Gran Novela Estadounidense, Didion se entrega al detalle, a lo pequeño e intrascendente, con una generosidad absoluta. La mirada a
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