Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem is a favorite anthology of mine. Filled with Didion's writing from over the years, it covers all kinds of non-fiction. Didion covers personal accounts, to articles, to essays like "On Keeping A Notebook." Heavy at times, her ironic, deep look at every subject kept me rapt at attention. This is another bedtime book that I revisit every now and then, consuming it in bite-sized chunks.
Key Takeaways
Memorable Quotes
Rating: 9/10
Dark, heavy, and deep, Didion's look at every subject provokes emotion and thought. This read is versatile because you can grab one bit at a time, or you can read it in a single sitting. Each time, I revisit it, I take away exactly what I need at the time.
Key Takeaways
- Self respect
- Keeping a notebook
- Self-deception
Memorable Quotes
- I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.
- People with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called *character,* a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to the other, more instantly negotiable virtues.... character--the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life--is the source from which self-respect springs.
- The ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language.
- We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.
- I know something about dread myself, and appreciate the elaborate systems with which some people fill the void, appreciate all the opiates of the people, whether they are as accessible as alcohol and heroin and promiscuity or as hard to come by as faith in God or History.
- The future always looks good in the golden land, because no one remembers the past.
- See enough and write it down, I tell myself, and then some morning when the world seems drained of wonder, some day when I am only going through the motions of doing what I am supposed to do... on that bankrupt morning I will simply open my notebook and there it will all be, a forgotten account with accumulated interest, paid passage back to the world out there...
- Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignation with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. One shuffles flashily but in vain through one's marked cards- the kindness done for the wrong reason, the apparent triumph which involved no real effort, the seemingly heroic act into which one had been shamed.
Rating: 9/10
Dark, heavy, and deep, Didion's look at every subject provokes emotion and thought. This read is versatile because you can grab one bit at a time, or you can read it in a single sitting. Each time, I revisit it, I take away exactly what I need at the time.
