Joan Didion was one of the great observers and commentators on the world from the 1960’s until her recent death in January at the age of 87.  A multi-generational Californian, she headed to NYC to write for Vogue after her graduation from Berkeley but she always remained focused on the California of the 1960’s and ’70’s—–the Black Panthers, the Doors, and the ‘turn on, tune in, drop out’ generation.

This collection of 12 previously published but not collected essays is introduced by Hilton Als, a contemporary observer in the Didion mode.  They range from the dated pieces about street newspapers in 1960’s California, the Hearst castle, and Nancy Reagan to more contemporary and relevant essays about Hemingway, Martha Stewart, and her own education and development as a writer.  The style is one of lean, mean, and focused observations and interpretation, and there is much to quote and return to in these works.  Superb.

My favorite two pieces are those on Hemingway and Martha Stewart.  In the Hemingway essay, she is critical of his sons and publisher for putting his final work about Africa into publication based on notes, outlines, and some completed chapters.  She writes that ‘notes and outlines’ do not make a finished work and publishing based on those diminishes the importance and essentiality of the writer’s work.  (As an aside, the irony of this collection being published after her death struck me. Did she approve this collection? Did she choose the essays?  Did she rework any of them?).  The Martha Stewart essay provided a new view of Martha. It was written in 2000 well before Martha turned 80 and a few years before she went to jail for insider trading. Didion admires her and casts her as a powerful and effective woman in a man’s world.  Hard to know if she would have edited or amended this essay in view of what happened after it was written in 2000.

Didion is a terrific writer and an important influence in today’s non-fiction world.  Her impressions and opinions will be read for many years.  Read this book for an excellent sample of her work.