IniciGrupsConversesTendències
Cerca al lloc
Aquest lloc utilitza galetes per a oferir els nostres serveis, millorar el desenvolupament, per a anàlisis i (si no has iniciat la sessió) per a publicitat. Utilitzant LibraryThing acceptes que has llegit i entès els nostres Termes de servei i política de privacitat. L'ús que facis del lloc i dels seus serveis està subjecte a aquestes polítiques i termes.

Resultats de Google Books

Clica una miniatura per anar a Google Books.

S'està carregant…

Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays (1968)

de Joan Didion

Altres autors: Mira la secció altres autors.

MembresRessenyesPopularitatValoració mitjanaMencions
3,812752,876 (4.11)136
The "dazzling" and essential portrayal of 1960s America from the author of South and West and The Year of Magical Thinking (The New York Times). Capturing the tumultuous landscape of the United States, and in particular California, during a pivotal era of social change, the first work of nonfiction from one of American literature's most distinctive prose stylists is a modern classic. In twenty razor-sharp essays that redefined the art of journalism, National Book Award-winning author Joan Didion reports on a society gripped by a deep generational divide, from the "misplaced children" dropping acid in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district to Hollywood legend John Wayne filming his first picture after a bout with cancer. She paints indelible portraits of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes and folk singer Joan Baez, "a personality before she was entirely a person," and takes readers on eye-opening journeys to Death Valley, Hawaii, and Las Vegas, "the most extreme and allegorical of American settlements." First published in 1968, Slouching Towards Bethlehem has been heralded by the New York Times Book Review as "a rare display of some of the best prose written today in this country" and named to Time magazine's list of the one hundred best and most influential nonfiction books. It is the definitive account of a terrifying and transformative decade in American history whose discordant reverberations continue to sound a half-century later.… (més)
Afegit fa poc perbiblioteca privada, cqrobbie, Gene_Youngblood, jhylton, cheese_farm_library, rlhazelwood, captdavetulsa, HMALibrary
Biblioteques llegadesNelson Algren
  1. 01
    Tot se'n va en orris de Chinua Achebe (WSB7)
    WSB7: See "things falling apart" in very different (?) cultures.
S'està carregant…

Apunta't a LibraryThing per saber si aquest llibre et pot agradar.

No hi ha cap discussió a Converses sobre aquesta obra.

» Mira també 136 mencions

Es mostren 1-5 de 75 (següent | mostra-les totes)
This book is okay, some pieces more than that, some less, but I certainly didn’t encounter the shimmering revelation it’s reputed to be. In a couple places it bordered on approaching its reputation. But only a couple. And by the end (of a short book) I was tired of her somewhat affected style and her grasping for something to write about, rather than writing because she really had something of value to say that really merited being communicated to others. As opposed, for example, to Leo Strauss in his The City and Man. (I read the two books at the same time so I can’t help comparing them, as odd as that might be.)

I guess this is what journalists do, but a good journalist isn’t a Montaigne just because she’s considerably better than the low average. Yes, it’s rather interesting that she was in but not of the 60s generation, and that her critique could be labeled “conservative” while no one adopting that label would ever adopt her. Moderately interesting, like her writing and her insights. Nothing more.
( )
  garbagedump | Dec 9, 2022 |
I am honestly shocked by the rhapsodizing I've heard concerning her over the years. But I guess I shouldn't be. This smug sophisticate is precisely placed to give the establishment what it wants. It's very sly the way Didion guilelessly slouches through each scene, pulling out rugs, trying to spotlight ironies. She's the high-society poet of ennui, the vanquisher of unstylish rebels.

Viewed through the lens of her privileged bubble, challengers of the establishment, those rabble-rousing political types, are simple grotesques, naive child harbingers of chaos. This is because the ravages of inequality, injustice, state violence are faraway abstractions for her, unpleasantries to ruin a cocktail party (where she might show up just to look waifish, hide and judge people). Her heroes are figureheads of the capitalist fantasy machine like swaggering John "The Duke" Wayne and mega-rich playboy Hughes.

I finally had to stop after her nauseating ode to those 'self-loving' pioneers of the American frontier. You know the ones who swarmed the continent like locusts so we can have shopping malls instead of forests. Genocide can be wholesome fun as long as the victims are brown. Whoop-dee-doo for self-love. Her only previous mention of anyone of color is her painfully awkward and derisive depiction of a few faceless "negroes" in a crowd.

Does Didion deliver an insight or clever bon mot here or there? Hell, she spends every moment of her (stilted/shoe-gazing/chain-smoking/coke-swilling) life racing to jot down her every thought. She's bound to kick over a shiny pebble or two. But always she holds herself at a safe distance from life, never fathoming it in its essence. ( )
  PipRosi | Oct 21, 2022 |
New England is infinitely better than California, always has been always will be ( )
  bluestraveler | Aug 15, 2022 |
The first essays are great, but the last ones only so-so. ( )
  breic | May 29, 2022 |
I've awarded five stars to Joan Didion's remarkable Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays, a very rare rating from me for any work of nonfiction. I probably can't add anything to the acreage of praise her work has garnered through the years, latecomer that I am to this author's work. So instead I'll try to say how it makes me feel.

One thing I love about good writing in any genre is that I feel as though I were trying on somebody else's head. The view from Didion's head has crisp, bright edges and an underside of unsparing vulnerability. She has a way of turning--turning not magically but gyroscopically--keen observation into still meditation. I feel that I'm experiencing a crystalline vision of whatever she sees, in all its rounded and jagged reality, and also the echo of pain in the tender being of the observer.

And yet she never fully exposes her mind and its secrets. Instead she steers us toward our own, bringing clarity as well as deeper questions.

In this volume, images of the 1960s in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere are served with a quality of moving air that makes me feel that I am breathing in these scenes as the author experiences them. In the title essay in particular, the poignancy of her depiction of the Haight in the summer of 1967 is almost too vivid for my sensory imagination. I wasn't there. I was in Boston that summer, Boston's own summer of love. A summer that bridged the nation.

I've already read and drunk in The Year of Magical Thinking, which helped me greatly in my first months of widowhood. I'll be seeking out the rest of her work. ( )
1 vota Meredy | Apr 30, 2022 |
Es mostren 1-5 de 75 (següent | mostra-les totes)
Sense ressenyes | afegeix-hi una ressenya

» Afegeix-hi altres autors (3 possibles)

Nom de l'autorCàrrecTipus d'autorObra?Estat
Joan Didionautor primaritotes les edicionscalculat
Keaton, DianeNarradorautor secundarialgunes edicionsconfirmat
Has d'iniciar sessió per poder modificar les dades del coneixement compartit.
Si et cal més ajuda, mira la pàgina d'ajuda del coneixement compartit.
Títol normalitzat
Títol original
Títols alternatius
Data original de publicació
Gent/Personatges
Llocs importants
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès. Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
Esdeveniments importants
Pel·lícules relacionades
Premis i honors
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès. Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
Epígraf
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès. Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
W. B. Yeats's poem beginning:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;


...is set down in full, as well as a quote from Miss Peggy Lee:

I learned courage from Buddah, Jesus, Lincoln, Einstein, and Cary Grant.
Dedicatòria
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès. Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
For Quintana
Primeres paraules
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès. Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
This is a story about love and death in the golden land, and begins with the country.
Citacions
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès. Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference.
It is often said that New York City is a city for only the very rich and the very poor. It is less often said that New York is also, at least for those of us who came there from somewhere else, a city for only the very young.
Darreres paraules
Nota de desambiguació
Editor de l'editorial
Creadors de notes promocionals a la coberta
Llengua original
CDD/SMD canònics
LCC canònic

Referències a aquesta obra en fonts externes.

Wikipedia en anglès (3)

The "dazzling" and essential portrayal of 1960s America from the author of South and West and The Year of Magical Thinking (The New York Times). Capturing the tumultuous landscape of the United States, and in particular California, during a pivotal era of social change, the first work of nonfiction from one of American literature's most distinctive prose stylists is a modern classic. In twenty razor-sharp essays that redefined the art of journalism, National Book Award-winning author Joan Didion reports on a society gripped by a deep generational divide, from the "misplaced children" dropping acid in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district to Hollywood legend John Wayne filming his first picture after a bout with cancer. She paints indelible portraits of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes and folk singer Joan Baez, "a personality before she was entirely a person," and takes readers on eye-opening journeys to Death Valley, Hawaii, and Las Vegas, "the most extreme and allegorical of American settlements." First published in 1968, Slouching Towards Bethlehem has been heralded by the New York Times Book Review as "a rare display of some of the best prose written today in this country" and named to Time magazine's list of the one hundred best and most influential nonfiction books. It is the definitive account of a terrifying and transformative decade in American history whose discordant reverberations continue to sound a half-century later.

No s'han trobat descripcions de biblioteca.

Descripció del llibre
Sumari haiku

Cobertes populars

Dreceres

Valoració

Mitjana: (4.11)
0.5
1 5
1.5 1
2 20
2.5 4
3 117
3.5 23
4 236
4.5 40
5 250

Ets tu?

Fes-te Autor del LibraryThing.

 

Quant a | Contacte | LibraryThing.com | Privadesa/Condicions | Ajuda/PMF | Blog | Botiga | APIs | TinyCat | Biblioteques llegades | Crítics Matiners | Coneixement comú | 185,459,980 llibres! | Barra superior: Sempre visible