Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays (FSG Classics)

“Because when we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is in we are in bad trouble. And I suspect we are already there.” (I also suspect) Absolutely thrilled that this was the inaugural Book Bugs Book Club book, and as such, the first book I have brought myself to annotate. A tough one to start with, because every beautiful line that Didion writes deserves to be highlighted. This collection focuses primarily on California in the 1960s, a place I have never been and a time I will never experience. Yet, I would believe you if you told me she wrote this book contemporarily. The essays do not feel dated and remain undeniably relevant. I have to wonder if Joan is actually an andromedon, omniscient in her understanding of the human condition (just watched Bugonia, obv). The personal essays really resonated and have stuck with me since. A couple of my favourites: From On Keeping a Notebook: “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” And a page or so later, in the same essay: “I suspect she will reappear when I least want to see her, skirts too long, shy to the point of aggravation, always the injured party, full of recriminations and little hurts and stories I do not want to hear again, at once saddening me and angering me with her vulnerability and ignorance, an apparition all the more insistent for being so long banished.” On Self-Respect: This one spoke to me in a way that made me uncomfortable (I am working on it!) “To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectation of others, to give us back to ourselves — there lies the great, the singular power of self respect.” I could go on. Like I said, every sentence warrants a big fat underline! (Was anyone ever so young?)

I love a good California book, as a California girl myself. Not a huge fan of Didion’s politics, but this feels like a good snapshot of a time and place

Very hard to read. Couldn’t get through it!!!