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Staff Pick
If everyone wrote journal entries as honestly and incisively as Joan Didion, what a fully drawn world it would be. South and West is comprised of two diary excerpts from the ’70s, yet its focus on tensions surrounding place feels so relevant today. Recommended By Renee P., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
National Bestseller
One of the Best Books of the Year: NPR, Harper's Bazaar
Joan Didion has always kept notebooks--of overheard dialogue, interviews, drafts of essays, copies of articles. South and West gives us two extended excerpts from notebooks she kept in the 1970s; read together, they form a piercing view of the American political and cultural landscape.
"Notes on the South" traces a road trip that she and her husband, John Gregory Dunne, took through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Her acute observations about the small towns they pass through, her interviews with local figures, and their preoccupation with race, class, and heritage suggest a South largely unchanged today. "California Notes" began as an assignment from Rolling Stone on the Patty Hearst trial. Though Didion never wrote the piece, the time she spent watching the trial in San Francisco triggered thoughts about the West and her own upbringing in Sacramento. Here we not only see Didion's signature irony and imagination in play, we're also granted an illuminating glimpse into her mind and process.
Review
“Fascinating. . . . Shine[s] with her trademark ability to capture mood and place.” The New York Times
Review
“Elegant, eerily prescient. . . . At once informal and immediate, magisterial and indelible.” Elle
Review
“Vintage Didion. . . . Remind[s] us of her brilliance as a stylist, social commentator and observer.” The Washington Post
About the Author
Joan Didion is the author of five novels and nine books of nonfiction. Her collected nonfiction, We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live, was published by Everyman’s Library in 2006. Born in Sacramento, California, Didion now lives in New York City.