South and West: From a Pocket book

Joan Didion has all the time saved notebooks—of overheard dialogue, interviews, drafts of essays, copies of articles. Listed below are two prolonged excerpts from notebooks she saved within the Seventies; learn collectively, they kind a piercing view of the American political and cultural panorama.

*One of many Finest Books of the Yr: NPR, Harper's Bazaar*
 
“Notes on the South” traces a highway journey that she and her husband, John Gregory Dunne, took via Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Her acute observations in regards to the small cities they move via, her interviews with native figures, and their preoccupation with race, class, and heritage recommend a South largely unchanged at present.

“California Notes” started as an project from Rolling Stone on the Patty Hearst trial. Although Didion by no means wrote the piece, the time she spent watching the trial in San Francisco triggered ideas in regards to the West and her personal upbringing in Sacramento. Right here we not solely see Didion’s signature irony and creativeness in play, we’re additionally granted an illuminating glimpse into her thoughts and course of.