Where I Was From

Fülszöveg

HISTORY/MEMOIR
"An arresting amalgam of memoir and historical timeline. . . Exquisitely crafted, as subtle as the slow waking from a pleasant dream. —The Baltimore Sun

In her moving and insightful new book, Joan Didion reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history and ours. A native Californian, Didion applies her scalpel-like intelligence to the state's ethic of ruthless self-sufficiency in order to examine that ethic's often tenuous relationship to reality.
Combining history and reportage, memoir and literary criticism, Where I Was From explores California's romances with land and water; its unacknowledged debts to railroads, aerospace, and big government; the disjunction between its code of individualism and its fetish for prisons. Whether she is writing about her pioneer ancestors or privileged sexual predators, robber barons, or writers (not excluding herself), Didion is an unparalleled observer, and her book is at once intellectually provocative and deeply... Tovább

Fülszöveg

HISTORY/MEMOIR
"An arresting amalgam of memoir and historical timeline. . . Exquisitely crafted, as subtle as the slow waking from a pleasant dream. —The Baltimore Sun

In her moving and insightful new book, Joan Didion reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history and ours. A native Californian, Didion applies her scalpel-like intelligence to the state's ethic of ruthless self-sufficiency in order to examine that ethic's often tenuous relationship to reality.
Combining history and reportage, memoir and literary criticism, Where I Was From explores California's romances with land and water; its unacknowledged debts to railroads, aerospace, and big government; the disjunction between its code of individualism and its fetish for prisons. Whether she is writing about her pioneer ancestors or privileged sexual predators, robber barons, or writers (not excluding herself), Didion is an unparalleled observer, and her book is at once intellectually provocative and deeply personal.
"One beautiful sentence follows another____This is a book about history,
about what we learn from genealogy and history books, novels and old newspapers, and how we square all that with what we see around us— Didion has remained a clearheaded and original writer all her long life."
— Newsweek
"Succinct and quite beautiful____Its rewards are many. If anyone needs
further confirmation that she is one of the finest essayists currently at work, this book will nail it." — The Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer Vissza