[1]It’s the perfect last minute holiday gift, since everyone needs a copy of Slouching Towards Bethlehem [2], 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)