A half-century after its initial publication in 1968, Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem remains the essential portrait of America--and California in particular--during the sixties. The remarkable debut essay collection by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era, it explores such subjects as John Wayne and Howard Hughes; growing up in California; the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room; and San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture. As Dan Wakefield wrote in The New York Times Book Review, 'In her portraits of people, [Didion] is not out to expose but to understand...[She] makes them neither villainous nor glamorous, but alive and botched and often mournfully beautiful'"--Back cover.
General Note
Essays.
Content Note
Life styles of the golden land. Some dreamers of the golden dream -- John Wayne : a love song -- Where the kissing never stops -- Comrade Laski, C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.) -- 7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38 -- California dreaming -- Marrying absurd -- Slouching towards Bethlehem -- Personals. On keeping a notebook -- On self-respect -- I can't get that monster out of my mind -- On morality -- On going home -- Seven places of the mind. Notes from a native daughter -- Letter from Paradise, 21°19' N., 157°52' W -- Rock of ages -- The seacoast of despair -- Guaymas, Sonora -- Los Angeles notebook -- Goodbye to all that.