Lungo l'infinito nastro di Moebius delle autostrade californiane, nelle hall dei vecchi hotel coloniali affacciati sulle bianche spiagge di Honolulu, negli studi di registrazione con Jim Morrison, a cena con registi svogliati che passano di film in film come nelle comuni losangeline si passa di letto in letto, alle feste con i produttori, nei centri commerciali con la figlia, Joan Didion attraversa gli anni sessanta e settanta, raccontandone bizzarrie, ossimori ed estremi: una giovane Nancy Reagan taglia gambi di rosa nel suo giardino, Charles Manson architetta il brutale omicidio della moglie di Roman Polanski, nei cinema di Bogotà si proiettano film americani vecchi di dieci anni, in una valle vicino a Malibu il giardiniere messicano Amado Vazquez coltiva le orchidee più belle del mondo. Reportage, racconto, diario intimo, prosa lirica: i testi che compongono "The White Album", opera insieme indefinibile e inconfondibile, mettono in evidenza le caratteristiche che i lettori di Joan Didion conoscono così bene dai suoi romanzi e memoriali: la lucidità stilistica e la risolutezza di visione, la testarda fedeltà a se stessa, la capacità di cogliere un dettaglio minuto della vita quotidiana e trasformarlo in emblema. Le aporie del movimento femminista, le molte contraddizioni delle Pantere nere, le incongruenze della protesta studentesca e insieme i corsi e ricorsi di una vicenda personale che segue ogni curva, ogni sbalzo di quegli anni. ( )

I didn't know what to expect with this, but I found it interesting and absorbing. Her style is at times rambling, but conversational as though you're talking over coffee. She brings fragments of time to vibrant life, sometimes painting the everyday as beautiful or awe worthy. These essays are accessible, intelligent explorations, and certainly worth diving into. ( )

Joan Didion is - was - a fine writer, who wrote essays and books with felicity. I liked some of the essays in the book, particularly "The White Album". The essay on aspects of California, like the one about the governor's house, is excellent, as is the essay on lying in bed.

The rest made no sense to me, because I did not understand the context. The problem with essays of this kind, is that they are bound to the cultural or political context in which they are written. If you don't understand the context, then the essays are meaningless, and the writing seems circular and tortuous. ( )

I loved this book, a raw look at the late 60's early 70s.

“Something we should stress at this press conference is who owns the media.”

“You don’t think it’s common knowledge that the papers represent corporate interests?” a realist among them interjected doubtfully.

“I don’t think it’s understood!’

That's a quote from the book about striking students. How did we get from students who understood that the media was a business, run by corporations that were out for themselves to today where a vast segment of the American population believes that somehow the left controls the media.

Someone once brought Janis Joplin to a party at the house on Franklin Avenue: she had just done a concert and she wanted brandy-and-Benedictine in a water tumbler. Music people never wanted ordinary drinks. They wanted sake, or champagne cocktails, or tequila neat. Spending time with music people was confusing, and required a more fluid and ultimately a more passive approach than I ever acquired. In the first place time was never of the essence: we would have dinner at nine unless we had it at eleven-thirty, or we could order in later.

She writes about the Doors as well.

Most of these other people were members of the Black Panther Party, but one of them, in the living room, was Eldridge Cleaver’s parole officer. It seems to me that I stayed about an hour. It seems to me that the three of us—Eldridge Cleaver, his parole officer and I—mainly discussed the commercial prospects of Soul on Ice, which, it happened, was being published that day. We discussed the advance ($5,000). We discussed the size of the first printing (10,000 copies). We discussed the advertising budget and we discussed the bookstores in which copies were or were not available. It was a not unusual discussion between writers, with the difference that one of the writers had his parole officer there and the other had stood out on Oak Street and been visually frisked before coming inside.

"After spending seven years in exile in Cuba, Algeria, and France, Cleaver returned to the US in 1975, where he became involved in various religious groups (Unification Church and CARP) before finally joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as well as becoming a conservative Republican, appearing at Republican events" wikipedia

It was a weird time and lots of weird stuff happened and this book does a great job showing just some of the oddities.

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considerations on 60s and 70s