Synopses & Reviews
Joan Didion is a major contemporary American novelist and journalist whose works have popular appeal and are widely studied from a variety of literary perspectives as well as for philosophical, psychological, and political insights into the times and topics with which they deal. This volume collects an extensive range of critical commentary, both reviews and scholarly examinations, including newly commissioned essays, covering the entire canon: four works of fiction and five of nonfiction published between 1963 and 1992. Individually, the selections explore diverse critical approaches to Didion's canon; collectively, they establish a critical map that will serve as a guide to future scholarship. A substantive introduction assesses the canon and the critical reaction to it. Other features include a brief chronology of Didion's accomplishments, a bibliography, and contributors and subject indexes.
Synopsis
This volume collects an extensive range of critical commentary, both reviews and scholarly examinations, on the entire Didion canon: four works of fiction and five of nonfiction published between 1963 through 1992.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [259]-269) and indexes.
Table of Contents
Series Foreword by Cameron Northouse
Introduction by Sharon Felton
Run River
New Yorker review
Playing it Rough by Thomas Hinde
The Journey Nowhere: Didion's Run River by Jennifer L. Randisi
Run River: A Western Story of Paradise Lost by Michelle Loris
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
From Hippies to Hawaii by Gerald Meyer
Her Heart's with the Wagon Trains by Melvin Maddocks
Joan Didion's Dreampolitics of the Self by Evan Carton
The Cat in the Shimmer by Chris Anderson
Play It As It Lays
Atlantic review by Phoebe-Lou Adams
A Treatment of the Theme of Social Disintegration by Peter Dollard
Novels and Nothingness by Mark Schorer
The Dissociation of Self in Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays by Rodney Simard
Making Sense and Telling Stories: Problems of Cognition and Narration in Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays by Sandra K. Hinchman
A Book of Common Prayer
Kirkus Reviews review
America review by Elizabeth Woods Shaw
Didion's Grace by Peter Prescott
Through Greene-land in Drag: Joan Didion's A Book of Common Prayer by Patricia Merivale
Joan Didion: Witnessing the Abyss by Samuel Chase Coale
The White Album
Atlantic review by Phoebe-Lou Adams
Pictures from an Expedition by Martha Duffy
Joan Didion's Symbolic Landscapes by Merritt Mosley
The Poetics of Joan Didion's Journalism by Mark Z. Muggli
Salvador
Salvadorean Nights by David Leppard
A Culture of Fear by Juan E. Corradi
Snap Books by Michael Massing
To El Salvador by Lynne Hanley
Democracy
Atlantic review by Phoebe-Lou Adams
Library Journal review by Janet E. Wiehe
An American Education by Thomas R. Edwards
American Spectator review by Thomas Mallon
The Political Vision of Joan Didion's Democracy by Michael Tager
Joan Didion and the Presence of Absence by Janis P. Stout
Miami
Choice review by J. Raferty
Didion's Miami and Multiple Realities by Ruth Walker
The Mirage of Miami by Nicholas Lemann
Didion's Political Tropics: Miami and the Basis for Community by Sandra K. Hinchman
After Henry
Didion Moves East but Remains at Home in the Essay by John Lownsbrough
American Spectator review by Christopher Caldwell
Actual Experience, Preferred Narratives: Didion's After Henry by Laura Julier
Bibliography
Contributors Index
Subject Index