Slouching towards Bethlehem / Joan Didion.
By: Didion, Joan [author]
.
Material type: 
BookSeries: FSG classics: Publisher: New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008Description: xiv, 238 pages ; 21 cm.Content type: text Media type: unmediated Carrier type: volumeISBN: 9780374531386 (paperback) .Subject(s): Hippies | Counterculture -- History -- 20th century -- United StatesDDC classification: 814.54 | Item type | Current library | Call number | Status | Barcode | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| General lending | MTU Crawford College of Art and Design Library Lending | 814.54 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Available | 00228175 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
Joan Didion's first work of nonfiction, Slouching Towards Bethlehem , is considered a masterpiece of American literature and the "foundational text" of her oeuvre ( New York Times ). First published in 1968, the book remains a defining work about the Sixties, about California, about America.
More than perhaps any other book, this collection of essays by Didion--one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era--captures her focus on time and place at a unique moment in history. Here, Didion explores people and subjects such as John Wayne, Howard Hughes, growing up in California, the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, and the birth of American counterculture. Didion's work in Slouching has become a totem for readers "who have lost their sense of place or sense of time or sense of self" ( The Rumpus ). "In her portraits of people," writes the New York Times , "Didion is not out to expose but to understand."
Hailed as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time ( Time Magazine ) and as a classic of New Journalism, Slouching Towards Bethlehem is Didion at her finest.
Originally published: 1968.
Life styles of the golden land. Some dreamers of the golden dream -- John Wayne : a love song -- Where the kissing never stops -- Comrade Laski, C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.) -- 7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38 -- California dreaming -- Marrying absurd -- Slouching towards Bethlehem -- Personals. On keeping a notebook -- On self-respect -- I can't get that monster out of my mind -- On morality -- On going home -- Seven places of the mind. Notes from a native daughter -- Letter from Paradise, 21⁰19' N., 157⁰52' W -- Rock of ages -- The seacoast of despair -- Guaymas, Sonora -- Los Angeles notebook -- Goodbye to all that.
"A half century after its initial publication in 1968, Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem remains the essential portrait of America--particularly California--in the sixties. It focuses on such subjects as John Wayne and Howard Hughes, growing up a girl in California, ruminating on the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, and, especially, the essence of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture." -- Back cover.
Author notes provided by Syndetics
Born in Sacramento, California, on December 5, 1934, Joan Didion received a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1956. She wrote for Vogue from 1956 to 1963, and was visiting regent's lecturer in English at the University of California, Berkeley in 1976.Didion also published novels, short stories, social commentary, and essays. Her work often comments on social disorder. Didion wrote for years on her native California; from there her perspective broadened and turned to the countries of Central America and Southeast Asia.
Her novels include Democracy (1984) and The Last Thing He Wanted (1996). Well known nonfiction titles include Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968), The White Album (1979), The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) and Blue Nights (2011). In 1971 Joan Didion was nominated for the National Book Award in fiction for Play It As It Lays. In 1981 she received the American Book Award in nonfiction, and was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Prize in nonfiction for The White Album.
Didion has received a great deal of recognition for The Year of Magical Thinking, which was awarded the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2005. In 2007, Didion received the National Book Foundation's annual Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. In 2009, Didion was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by Harvard University. On July 3, 2013 the White House announced Didion was one of the recipients of the National Medals of Arts and Humanities presented by President Barack Obama.
(Bowker Author Biography)