Joan Didion writes about the bizarrely suffocating
atmosphere of her native California in Where
I Was From. A place filled with
mystique and doom, her California is a land that not only fails to deliver on
its promised dreams, but actively derails people from doing so. Form the Donner Party to the railroads to
Hollywood, California has epitomized American hopes, aspirations and failures
writ large.
In this collection, Didion writes particularly well
about her native Sacramento and her family of old California settlers. Here she writes with pathos, love, despair, and a
tincture of hate… complex emotions and ideas that she handles with her typical
skill and devotion.
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