Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Essays
Farrar Straus & Giroux · Print & ebook · October 28, 2008
Celebrated, iconic, and indispensable, Joan Didion’s first work of nonfiction, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, is considered a watershed moment in American writing.
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- Who it’s for
- Didion’s essays bring California and its counterculture into focus through controlled, sharply observant prose.
- Themes
- San Francisco counterculture, California and growing up, Good and evil
- Genres
- Essay Collections, Journalism, Women Authors Collections
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Start with this bookAbout this book
Celebrated, iconic, and indispensable, Joan Didion’s first work of nonfiction, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, is considered a watershed moment in American writing. First published in 1968, the collection was critically praised as one of the “best prose written in this country.”
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More than perhaps any other book, this collection by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era captures the unique time and place of Joan Didion’s focus, exploring subjects such as John Wayne and Howard Hughes, growing up in California and the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, and, especially, the essence of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture. As Joyce Carol Oates remarked: “[Didion] has been an articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time, a memorable voice, partly eulogistic, partly despairing; always in control.”
California, Closely Read
Didion’s essays bring California and its counterculture into focus through controlled, sharply observant prose.
Come here for
- A writer’s-eye view of Haight-Ashbury and the wider California moment
- Essays ranging from John Wayne to questions of good and evil
Expect
- Distinctive prose across a varied nonfiction collection
- A layered look at a specific time and place
Where it sits
| Essay Collections | 78% |
|---|---|
| Journalism | 44% |
| Women Authors Collections | 21% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Essay Collections
- Place-Based Collections
- Women Authors Criticism
- Authors
- Joan Didion
- Publisher
- Farrar Straus & Giroux
- Published
- October 28, 2008
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- San Francisco counterculture · California and growing up · Good and evil
- Reading lane
- Essay Collections