Joan Effing Didion

"In her portraits of people, Didion is not out to expose by to understand... [She] makes them neither villainous nor glamorous, but alive and botched and often mournfully beautiful." - Dan Wakefield.

Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem was a sudden turning point in my book genre appreciation journey (if you will). Over the summer just gone, I had quit my job, finished my semester of law for the year, and was looking for work, or for something to occupy my mind with other than the fact that I had no money and was trying to save for my next stint of living abroad, whilst also trying to have something to do whilst everyone else did work. I was a quiet mess. And so, like any other person who doesn't want to do just anything with their time, I started doing everything under the sun. One of those things was travelling frequently to Sydney to see friends, to spend the $3.80 and spend three hours on a train whirring and jolting along the Hawksbury River in a sullen blanket of fog. 

In those hours, I learnt a lot. Whether I was writing or rather taking in words from the writing of others, I was developing thoughts in my own mind and churning those out all over again. I read A book by Leandra Medine (of 'Man Repeller' fame) that was quick, witty, funny and pretty girly. But this Jewish renown schlepper was a beacon of hope for me. She also pointed out her favourite novelists and writers, of which Joan Didion happened to be one. The title of the book she referenced, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, had me intrigued. Was it a story of Jewish life in the United States of America?  Uhh, even better. It was Joan interviewing prominent people of the 60s in California in some form of putrid wet dream of disappointment that was suburban life and the "American Dream". Her attentiveness to the stink of the air around her and the underwhelming existence of people in such a tumultuous time is full of flavour and wonderfully poignant. 

So read it.