JOAN DIDION
Joan Didion (1934-2021 ) was a novelist, journalist, and memoirist from California who for over 50 years wrote some of the sharpest and most evocative analyses of American culture, politics, and mise en scène. Her novels captured a victorious postwar people struggling with anxieties, doubts, and the chloroform of abundance. Although the literary influences on her seem clear (Joseph Conrad, Hemingway, Graham Greene, noir, perhaps some Beat, definitely New Journalism), she is justly famous for her own cool, distanced, and all-seeing style. Her writing imbues us with awe. If you want to understand America, you must read Didion.
The Joan Didion Collection: Library of America Boxed Set, 3 volumes
The Joan Didion Collection: Library of America Boxed Set, 3 volumes
The ultimate Didion: all 17 of her major works of fiction, journalism, and memoir together for the first time in a 3-volume boxed set
A must for fans of the most eclectic and enduring writers of the last half century
In 1968, a collection of reportage appeared that was unlike anything seen before, remarkable in its literary aspiration and a milestone in what would become known as the New Journalism. A series of wickedly incisive portraits of California and its people—from fading stars to homicidal housewives to drug-addled hippies—Slouching Towards Bethlehem was a sensation, signaling the arrival of a major writer. It attracted not only readers but devotees, and Joan Didion became more than just a celebrated author, she became an icon for the age. Now, for the first time, all her best-known and most enduring works are gathered together in a career-spanning 3-volume Library of America boxed set.
THE JOAN DIDION COLLECTION includes:
I. The 1960s & 70s
Run River
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Play It As It Lays
A Book of Common Prayer
The White Album
II. The 1980s & 90s
Salvador
Democracy
Miami
After Henry
The Last Thing He Wanted
III. Memoirs & Later Writings
Political Fictions
Fixed Ideas
Where I Was From
The Year of Magical Thinking (memoir and play)
Blue Nights
South and West
Edited by David L. Ulin, each volume contains a textual essay, a chronology of Didion’s life and career, and detailed notes.