Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
South and West: From a Notebook

South and West: From a Notebook

Didion, Joan
Rich, Nathaniel

Hardcover

Biographies GeneralLiterary FiguresLetters & Essays

Publisher Price: $21.00

ISBN10: 1524732796
ISBN13: 9781524732790
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: Mar 7 2017
Pages: 160
Weight: 0.50
Height: 0.70 Width: 4.90 Depth: 7.50
Language: English
From the best-selling author of the National Book Award-winning The Year of Magical Thinking two extended excerpts from her never-before-seen notebooks--writings that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary writer.

Joan Didion has always kept notebooks: of overheard dialogue, observations, interviews, drafts of essays and articles--and here is one such draft that traces a road trip she took with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, in June 1970, through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. She interviews prominent local figures, describes motels, diners, a deserted reptile farm, a visit with Walker Percy, a ladies' brunch at the Mississippi Broadcasters' Convention.

She writes about the stifling heat, the almost viscous pace of life, the sulfurous light, and the preoccupation with race, class, and heritage she finds in the small towns they pass through. And from a different notebook: the California Notes that began as an assignment from Rolling Stone on the Patty Hearst trial of 1976. Though Didion never wrote the piece, watching the trial and being in San Francisco triggered thoughts about the city, its social hierarchy, the Hearsts, and her own upbringing in Sacramento.

Here, too, is the beginning of her thinking about the West, its landscape, the western women who were heroic for her, and her own lineage, all of which would appear later in her acclaimed 2003 book, Where I Was From.

One of TIME's most anticipated books of 2017

One of The New York Times Book Review's What You'll Be Reading in 2017

Includued among the Best Books of March 2017 by both LitHub and Signature

1 different editions

Also available

Also from

Didion, Joan

View All

Also in

Letters & Essays

View All