In front of me lies a copy of Joan Didion’s “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,”a collection of essays describing the ethos of life in California during the 1960s. It weaves themes of social disorder, disillusionment, the inherent rot within Americana and the search for identity through a haze of tumult. I began reading the book not long ago, immediately enraptured by the world within Didion’s remarkably-crafted sentences.
Didion is widely recognized today as one of the most iconic voices in American literature. She is known for her poignant cultural-commentary. Didion’s insight into the pulse of a nation undergoing significant turbulence cemented her at the forefront of the New Journalism movement. She wrote an array of novels, essays, magazine articles and screenplays.
While her work primarily focused on capturing the unique chaos of her era, Didion’s wisdom is timeless. Her writing offers a profound look into the human condition that transcends paper. As young women in college, I’m sure most of you have felt “lost” at some point. Didion’s riveting storytelling and introspection will surely leave you feeling less alone. Here are five of my favorite quotes from the acclaimed writer:
1. “We tell ourselves stories in order to live… We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the “ideas” with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.”
— “The White Album” (1979)
2. “…I think we are well-advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.”
— “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” (1968)
3. “It is the phenomenon sometimes called “alienation from self.” In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves – there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.”
— “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” (1968)
4. “Sometime later there was a song on all the jukeboxes on the upper East Side that went “but where is the school-girl who used to be me,” and if it was late enough at night I used to wonder that. I know now that almost everyone wonders something like that, sooner or later and no matter what he or she is doing, but one of the mixed blessings of being twenty and twenty-one and even twenty-three is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened to anyone before.”
— “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” (1968)
5. “I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.”
— UC Riverside commencement address (1975)
Whether you’re a young woman searching for direction, or an aspiring writer looking to perfect their usage of language — Joan Didion’s work is absolutely essential. I highly recommend that you begin with “Slouching Towards Bethlehem.” Within a few sentences, you will sense an impenetrable connection toward Didion and her perspective.