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A review by laurenkd89
South and West: From a Notebook by Joan Didion
3.0
I haven’t read Joan Didion in a while, and this book is markedly different from her other works. It’s not a memoir or anything really personal, and it can’t really even be called an essay collection. Didion and her husband went on a road trip around the Gulf Coast in the 1970s, and Didion thought she might have made a piece out of it, so she kept notes, made observations, and did a few interviews. She never ended up writing that piece, however, so all of those notes stayed just that: notes. 40 years later, Didion or someone at her publisher must have encouraged her to unearth those notes, lightly edit them into sentences, and publish it in this slim collection.
I can’t say I enjoyed this as much as I’ve enjoyed Didion’s other works. Not only do I feel like it was a little half-assed - she brings up interesting themes and observations like “sports as the opiate of the masses” or “the time warp in which The Civil War happened yesterday, but 1960 was 300 years ago” but doesn’t elaborate on them any more than just one sentence - but it also rang elitist and negative the whole way through.
She says that she wanted to visit the South because it would help her understand America and California even better, but she ends up hating her visit and having almost nothing but bad things to say about the people, the weather, the towns, the roads, the infrastructure, and the food. She repeatedly remarks that she wouldn’t want to get close to a big city out of fear that she wouldn’t be able to resist hopping on the next Delta flight back to California.
I’ll admit that the heat, the swampiness, and the mire of summer evoke a very powerful image in the reader’s mind, but it certainly doesn’t make you want to go visit these locations, and you can tell it certainly made Didion miserable. I think that if she wanted to set herself up for success with these visits, she probably should have gone in the fall or spring.
What’s keeping me from giving this one or two stars is really, as always, the beauty and power of her writing. There’s no doubt that she is a masterful writer and a master observer, and even in these brief and negative chapters, you can see that clearly. Criticism has said that her observations of the South are still as true today as they were in the 70s, but I am hesitant to believe that all of these cities are still one horse towns that dream of growth and real roads. She doesn’t make nearly as many frank observations about race as I was expecting, and maybe that’s for the best.
In regards to the last, very short section on California, I could have done without those few pages. It felt very disjointed from the rest of the book, and perhaps belonged more in a separate work, like Where I Was From. It was really just added on because, like the notes on the South, it was another unfinished piece with notes behind it.
I can’t say I enjoyed this as much as I’ve enjoyed Didion’s other works. Not only do I feel like it was a little half-assed - she brings up interesting themes and observations like “sports as the opiate of the masses” or “the time warp in which The Civil War happened yesterday, but 1960 was 300 years ago” but doesn’t elaborate on them any more than just one sentence - but it also rang elitist and negative the whole way through.
She says that she wanted to visit the South because it would help her understand America and California even better, but she ends up hating her visit and having almost nothing but bad things to say about the people, the weather, the towns, the roads, the infrastructure, and the food. She repeatedly remarks that she wouldn’t want to get close to a big city out of fear that she wouldn’t be able to resist hopping on the next Delta flight back to California.
I’ll admit that the heat, the swampiness, and the mire of summer evoke a very powerful image in the reader’s mind, but it certainly doesn’t make you want to go visit these locations, and you can tell it certainly made Didion miserable. I think that if she wanted to set herself up for success with these visits, she probably should have gone in the fall or spring.
What’s keeping me from giving this one or two stars is really, as always, the beauty and power of her writing. There’s no doubt that she is a masterful writer and a master observer, and even in these brief and negative chapters, you can see that clearly. Criticism has said that her observations of the South are still as true today as they were in the 70s, but I am hesitant to believe that all of these cities are still one horse towns that dream of growth and real roads. She doesn’t make nearly as many frank observations about race as I was expecting, and maybe that’s for the best.
In regards to the last, very short section on California, I could have done without those few pages. It felt very disjointed from the rest of the book, and perhaps belonged more in a separate work, like Where I Was From. It was really just added on because, like the notes on the South, it was another unfinished piece with notes behind it.