Joan didion's sacramento (appointed, renting, school)

[Chimérique]

If you know Sacramento, it's pulse, its Soul, its easy to know that Joan Didion was born and raised in Sacramento. She was a 5th generation Sacramentan.

And, yes, there are plenty of people who were born and still very much alive before Didion left Sacramento.

Joan Didion was schooled here and was very much a part of Sacramento. She went to California Middle School in Land Park, McClatchy High School, Sacramento Junior College. She lived in Sacramento from 1934 to 1953. She came back often especially during her college years, Berkeley was just a train ride away. She learned to swim in the Sacramento and the American, and continued her visits to Sacramento for years. Her daughter lived in Curtis Park, Sacramento with her grandparents for a time.

She graduated from Berkeley when it was the only large worldly university closest to Sacramento. Back in 1953, Sac State was a very small college in its infancy where you could earn a bachelors/masters degree, but not a doctorate; UC Davis was also in its infancy.

Stanford, the other large worldly university across the Bay was her first choice, but they rejected her. She framed the rejection notice.

Her best work about Sacramento, Run River, gives an account of Sacramento that no historian is capable of conveying no matter how hard they try because she doesn't pretend to be unbiased, she doesn't pretend to be telling the whole truth, but when you read her you know she is authentic, she doesn't pretend to be writing our history, and yet she does.

Her words are timeless, and as far as I know, she has never uttered a word of "dusting her shoes off of Sacramento", nor has "she refused to learn anything about what has happened here in the intervening half-century plus".

Read her, read Didion, not some critic’s description or opinion of her, you'll be the better for it.

[Chimérique]

Didion lived on U Street, 1200 block; Highland Ave in Curtis Park; a big Victorian on Hawthorn Street; Walnut Ave in Carmiachel, and the famous Didion house 2000 22nd Street.

Didion wrote for the Sacramento Union, and she was friends with Governor Earl Warren's daughter while they lived in the Governor's Mansion on 16th street.

Sidenote: Her father was a real estate developer among many other attributes and there is a brand new 4-story condo building going up on J Street in midtown, called "The Didion".

[wburg]

Originally Posted by Chimérique

her relatives were from the Donna-Reed Party

slight difference there



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Reed


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donner_Party



Didion was very much aware of her own limitations, and her own susceptibility to succumb to myth. She's most definitely worth reading, but with a critical eye, as Didion herself reads and judges her own work.

In her 2003 book of essays Where I Was From, Didion turned a critical eye on this novel. She recalled writing it as a homesick girl lately moved from California to New York, and judged it to be a work of false nostalgia, the construction of an idyllic myth of rural Californian life that she knew to never have existed.

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run,_River

[CA4Now]

Didion has a new book, Let Me Tell You What I Mean, a new collection of old essays.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainmen...ad-joan-didion

[KathrynAragon]

I just read one of her books - her most famous one in fact (The Year of Magical Thinking) - and frankly, I could not relate to her in any way, shape, or form, even though her husband, like mine, just dropped dead suddenly from a heart attack. I mean, I thought that was one element we could "meet and agree" on but her whole writing style, background, current lifestyle, etc. just permeated so much of her book (and I guess rightly so) that though I soldiered through it, I just couldn't relate to her mindset at all. And writing styles are subjective, but I didn't personally care for hers much. It was difficult to get through that book, mostly for that reason alone.

I personally got a lot more out of CS Lewis's book "A Grief Observed," even though he was a man, in England, didn't marry till very late in life, and his wife died a long, slow, painful death from cancer. Somehow I could relate more to him than to Joan Didion and her musings.

Anyway, never having been to Sacramento, I found her descriptions to be one of the more interesting aspects of the book, but I didn't feel like they were current descriptions, ever. Just an outsider's perspective. They seemed to me to be very much based in the past and not the present.

[Chimérique]

Some people are going to like her books, some aren't. No doubt, she is a well respected writers's writer, and a favorite of many. One of the best in the 20th and 21st centuries.

A true and honest journalist. She never really takes one side or the other, rather she lets the reader decide; its hard to find real journalists like that today.

She's never really been an actual Hollywood, Washington insider, but with access to insiders who respect her. She's is on the edge, observing from the outside thusly it's easy for her to tell the truth.

She's a kindred spirit.

[CA4Now]

Originally Posted by KathrynAragon

I just read one of her books - her most famous one in fact (The Year of Magical Thinking) - and frankly, I could not relate to her in any way, shape, or form...

Probably her most famous were Play It as It Lays, Slouching Toward Bethlehem and The White Album. I can see that if one had never lived--or spent a lot of time--in California, some of her work may not be of interest to that reader. She's a brilliant writer, though, and writes fiction as well as she does memoirs or political pieces.

[KathrynAragon]

Originally Posted by CA4Now

Probably her most famous were Play It as It Lays, Slouching Toward Bethlehem and The White Album. I can see that if one had never lived--or spent a lot of time--in California, some of her work may not be of interest to that reader. She's a brilliant writer, though, and writes fiction as well as she does memoirs or political pieces.

Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree. Writers and their styles are very subjective topics and books are difficult to gage when it comes to who will like a particular one.

I lived in California (San Francisco) as a child and had a grandmother who managed an apartment complex there in fact. It is Didion's style, not her subject matter, that I just don't care for.

[CA4Now]

Originally Posted by KathrynAragon

I lived in California (San Francisco) as a child and had a grandmother who managed an apartment complex there in fact. It is Didion's style, not her subject matter, that I just don't care for.

I can understand what you mean. I'm surprised that there's not more about Didion in the books subforum, where you and I would more likely post about authors and/or new books.

[wburg]

Originally Posted by KathrynAragon

Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree. Writers and their styles are very subjective topics and books are difficult to gage when it comes to who will like a particular one.

I lived in California (San Francisco) as a child and had a grandmother who managed an apartment complex there in fact. It is Didion's style, not her subject matter, that I just don't care for.

yeah, the whole argument that "Didion is entirely objective" seems pretty questionable. I guess it's a confirmation bias thing: for people who agree with Didion's opinion of Sacramento, they consider her position objective because it confirms their own position. For those who have different perspectives of Sacramento, or don't feel so strongly about it one way or the other, her position has less appeal. And part of her cult is based on her status as a Sacramento native daughter. Herb Caen is also similarly semi-revered, as a Sacramentan literary figure who did better after they left town.