It is perhaps significant that I purchased my copy of this book at the Vroman's bookstore on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. I loved the brief time I lived in California (though it was so short and so recent I doubt I even qualify as one of Didion's 'new people') and this seems like an almost talismanic combination of California writing and retail. California may be where Didion was from, but it's where I often wish I were.I must have had a vague inkling that I was dipping my toe in some dark California magic, but I found the present volume a little less than enchanting. Didion's much praised craftsmanship seemed polished to blinding and mildly repellant sheen in the first section of the book, and that 90 pages was a bit of a slog. But when she turned from looking at the state through the lens of her family to looking at it through the collapse of the aerospace industry in the second segment of the book, I couldn't put it down. Subsequent sections didn't seem to catch fire - Didion spends a lot of time parsing her early novel, Run River, but if were interested in it I would have picked it up and its discussion here seems a little out of place. It seems only to be there to raise the idea that there is nothing more tedious than a young person's nostalgia. Late reflections on madness, commitment and non-conformity, and the death of her mother are skillful braiding of fact and poetry, but on the whole the book is more flecks of gold here an there than a great strike.In its up and down-ness, I also found myself wondering about the author's penchant for asking rhetorical questions. I hadn't noticed this in other of Didion's books or essays, but the habit becomes so pervasive here as to detract from the quality and insights of her observations. It seems as if, at least in this case, it is enough to identify an injustice or problem. Discussion of solutions or proposals of alternatives never enter the formula. At one point, a reader could be forgiven for concluding that Didion feels as if the aerospace workers and their families in Lakewood had never deserved their brief 'elevation' to the middle class; that their ownership of tiny houses in subdivisions for which she can barely conceal her contempt was a sham all along. As a reader from generation X, this habit of questioning authority without demonstrating the will to change is tiresome. It was like reading "a love song to a place"' (as the Times blurbs on the cover) played on a station that clearly targets a certain demographic of which I am not part.So like California, the book has its problems. It is beautiful, but unfair. But like California, it's worth it.
In 'Where I Was From', Didion writes an examination of California that is a historical account, while remaining deeply rooter in her personal experience and point of view. I am still as enamored by her writing as I was in Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Didion structures Where I was From beginning with macro questions regarding California and proceeding to address those questions through her own filter. Much like certain essays in Crouching Towards Bethlehem, Didion ends this collection and examination quite abruptly with a highly personal series of essays. She does not dictate what the 'real' California experience is or the 'real' pioneer experience, but rather what is real for her family and her story. Through her own examination, it inspires a 'what's yours' but as a Californian it is impossible not to address the question.What is my relationship to California. To the 'change' Didion talks about? Or to the 'scrappy' entreprenureals? I would love to hear her take on Silicon Valley. Something I was thinking about that is adjacent to her points and perspective is how people from other states view California. Culturally it is still a highly idealized place with roads of gold. A promise land of sorts. People think of beaches and LA wealth and Silicon Valley and google and apple and San Diego sun and on and on. I found didion's examination of Lakewood SO interesting and beneficial the point she is trying g to make which is, it's an illusion. Somehow, between the people who live here and the people who dream of living here, we've created an image that Californians ourselves believe and buy into while the state as a whole is failing. The circumstances she illustrates in Lakewood have only gotten worse in the 13 years since this book was published. And yet.Also the way governments does and does not work! Californians have the strangest politics because there is still such a Sense of the pioneer and entrepreneur and individual. It was mostly individuals who made it here and as didion points out it grew too fast to think long term and plan a political system that would work for the broad demographics that the state ALREADY encompassed.After living in the northwest and reading Annie Dillard's intimate essays, musings and fiction based here, I would love to hear the two of them take a similar approach or even tone/subject on the two and do a comparison a grand west coast exposition. Just fun to imagine.Haha wrote this on a bus on my phone. Sloppy, but wanted to get it down :)
What do You think about Where I Was From (2004)?
As a more recent California transplant (or "new people" as Didion and descendants of the 19th century pioneers would call it), I found this book incredibly informative. But more so, it's a thought-provoking narrative on the rapid development of California, its paradoxical relationship with the federal government, and the complications that arise when booming industries bust. I am a lover of Didion's prose, and here she interweaves her own family history along with unabashed criticism and self-doubt. A great read for anyone who would like to learn more about how California's beautiful, wild spirit came to be -- but also its very real faults -- in a less traditional essay/memoir format.
—Keri Phelan
This is one the best books i have ever read. I am 57 and have read 1000's of books. All the other reviewers with less than a pure recommendation are simply of a lower IQ unable to appreciate the writing and content.Joan Didion is so talented and is such a skillful writer. I, a native Californian shared so many opinions and views as Ms. Didion. Watching the world change around us and the stories and values we thought were embedded into us evolve and dissolve as one (who is conscious) lives through such rapidly evolving landscape and culture is hard enough to process and articulate. Then to read the razor sharp clarity and journalistic skill coupled with her own deeply personalized history is just amazing. Thank you Joan Didion.
—Prints
Not my favourite Didion, by far, but beautifully written as always. An interesting read on the history and mythologies of California which nevertheless felt a bit remote for me, as I'm not from here or soaked in all of these stories. Ultimately the tone is quite Walt Whitman-esque but this is not my song that's being sung. As always, Didion is a poet of loss, and here the loss is her mother, her father, but more primordially, her land and her heritage. "There is no real way to deal with everything we lose".
—Sarah-louise Raillard
