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Slouching Towards Bethlehem
It’s the perfect last minute holiday gift, since everyone needs a copy of Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion’s remarkable collection of essays from the 1960’s. Her prose are spare, yet packed with so much intelligence and sly wit that depending on my mood, I am either deeply inspired to write, or think, why bother to mess with perfection. Here’s an excerpt from her piece On Self-Respect (originally written for Vogue) in which she talks about coming to terms with the end of innocence:
I lost the conviction that lights would always turn green for me, the pleasant certainty that those rather passive virtues which had won me approval as a child automatically guaranteed me not only Phi Beta Kappa keys but happiness, honor, and the love of a good man.
(Photo: Joan Didion in Hollywood, 1970, by Julian Wasser for Life Magazine)
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Great minds think alike: I’m just off to Barnes & Noble to pick up a last minute copy of this very book. I wholeheartedly agree everyone needs a copy. (My favorite essay is the last, ‘Goodbye to All That’)