Product Description

In her moving and insightful new book, Joan Didion reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history and ours. A native Californian, Didion applies her scalpel-like intelligence to the state’s ethic of ruthless self-sufficiency in order to examine that ethic’s often tenuous relationship to reality.

Combining history and reportage, memoir and literary criticism, Where I Was From explores California’s romances with land and water; its unacknowledged debts to railroads, aerospace, and big government; the disjunction between its code of individualism and its fetish for prisons. Whether she is writing about her pioneer ancestors or privileged sexual predators, robber barons or writers (not excluding herself), Didion is an unparalleled observer, and her book is at once intellectually provocative and deeply personal.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #45391 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-14
• Released on: 2004-09-14
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .1 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

From Publishers Weekly
California comes under Didion's captivating, merciless microscope in her controversial look at the greed, acquisitiveness and wasteful extravagance lurking beneath the state's eternal sunshine. In admirably lean, piercing prose, she describes her ancestors, women who could shoot, handle stock and shake snakes from their boots every morning. These pioneers had lived through an arduous crossing far removed from the noble odysseys chronicled by California mythmakers and arrived in wrecked wagons, facing desolation and death. Didion dramatically highlights the gap between California's rosy notion of itself as a land that stood for individual entrepreneurship, and the reality of growing government control and reliance on federal money. As a Sacramento native now living in New York, she conveys the tension of loving an area that's also disappointed her. She utilizes the 1993 Spur Posse scandal, in which teenage boys in Southern California slept with as many girls as possible and then regarded them as notches on their gun, to portray the spiritual vacancy of young Californian men, particularly in light of an overindulgent public attitude that downplayed their moral callousness. Didion cites cozy, pastel paintings by artists like Thomas Kinkade as contributing to the hazily romantic view of a state that treated foreigners early in its history with vicious bigotry, underrated education's importance and committed disturbed citizens to institutions on unacceptably flimsy evidence of their mental state. Throughout, Didion digs deep to find the "point" of California. Many will find her conclusions inflammatory and may rise to California's defense, but the book is a remarkable document precisely because of its power to trigger a national debate that can heighten awareness and improve conditions on the West Coast and throughout the country.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Didion's remarkable family history parallels that of the U.S. in its journey west, belief in starting over, and enduring stoicism. Her great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth Scott, was born in 1766 and left what became Virginia for Tennessee, Kentucky, and the Missouri Territory. Elizabeth's granddaughter traveled deep into the western frontier with the infamous Donner-Reed party, and others made it to the promised land of California, where Didion was born and raised. Her homeland has always influenced her work, but now in the wake of her parents' deaths, she sees her native land with startlingly fresh and revelatory clarity. As always, Didion is scrupulous in her research, discerning in her observations, and eloquent as she scours the outer world for keys to inner conflicts, and, consequently, her insights into California's psyche are perspicacious and arresting. A land seemingly dedicated to personal freedom, it is in fact a state saddled with an inordinate number of prisons, a debilitating dependence on the federal government, and an extraordinarily high incidence of mental instability. As Didion uncovers sharp memories and incisively interprets California's messy politics and dire economics, she not only creates an electrifying inquiry into the spirit of a unique place and the soul of an uncommon family but also illuminates with piercing candor the dark side of the pioneer mythos, the very heart of the American mystique. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
“Compelling. . . . A love song to the place where her family has lived for generations, but a love song full of questions and doubts.” –Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times“An arresting amalgam of memoir and historical timeline. . . . Exquisitely crafted, as subtle as the slow waking from a pleasant dream.” –The Baltimore Sun“One beautiful sentence follows another. . . . This is a book about history, about what we learn from genealogy and history books, novels and old newspapers, and how we square all that with what we see around us. . . . Didion has remained a clearheaded and original writer all her long life.” –Malcolm Jones, Newsweek“Succinct and quite beautiful. . . . Its rewards are many. If anyone needs further confirmation that she is one of the finest essayists currently at work, this book will nail it.” –The Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer“One of the most recognizable–and brilliant–literary styles to emerge in America during the past four decades. . . . [Didion is] a great American writer.” –The New York Times Book Review “Didion has written a brave little book . . . a fine book that must be read with as much care it was written. . . . [Didion is] an implacably honest writer.” –Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post“Valediction and elegy alike, Where I Was From is a storm-tossed book. Its history is dense . . . its prose sharp, direct and chiseled.” –The Los Angeles Times Book Review“Eloquent, spare, and rendered without sentiment.” –Boston Globe“[Didion is] a latter-day Walt Whitman, singing of America by singing of herself.” –Slate.com “Joan Didion is a brilliant explicator of the American political and cultural consciousness.” –Rocky Mountain News“Many of us have tried, and failed, to master [Didion’s] gift for the single ordinary deflating word, the word that spins an otherwise flat sentence through five degrees of irony. But her sentences could only be hers.” –Michael Gorra, Chicago Tribune“[A] fascinating, informative, obscure–and yes, moving–little book.” –San Jose Mercury News“A bracing mix of personal and public history.” –Benjamin Kunkel, Newsday“Odd, elliptical and ultimately revealing. . . . Didion discovers the exact locus where geography and personal journey intersect, and has produced a work as compelling and enigmatic as its subjects.” –Time Out New York“Where I Was From is a beautifully written and intensely personal tome. . . . One of the country’s most intelligent writers . . . Ms. Didion’s prose is like a razor cutting straight to the bone.” –New York Sun“[Didion's] appraisal is cool, her eye is sharp, and her turn of phrase is wicked.” –Time“How odd that bad news can be so much fun to read. Her essays are as sinewy as her novels, written in the same ice-pick/laser-beam prose.” –Harper’s