“’Slouching Towards Bethlehem’ is a classic of what was later named the New Journalism. Didion used a vernacular voice that mimicked the laid-back aimlessness of Haight speech. More New Journalistically, she adopted a Haight personality. She blended into the scene; she internalized its confusions. She gave readers the sense that she was putting herself at risk by reporting this story, that she might get sucked into the Haight abyss and become a lost soul, too: … ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’ is not a very good piece of standard journalism, though. Didion did no real interviewing or reporting. The hippies she tried to have conversations with said ‘Groovy’ a lot and recycled flower-power clichés. The cops refused to talk to her. So did the Diggers, who ran a sort of hippie welfare agency in the Haight. The Diggers accused Didion of ‘media poisoning,’ by which they meant coverage in the mainstream press designed to demonize the counterculture.” (Menand)
A reader may be asking themselves, what compelled Didion to her unique and creative voice, her 1976 essay Why I Write begins to answer this question.
“In short I tried to think. I failed. My attention veered inexorably back to the specific, to the tangible,
to what was generally considered, by everyone I knew then and for that matter have known since, the peripheral. I would try to contemplate the Hegelian dialectic and would find myself concentrating instead on a flowering pear tree outside my window and the particular way the petals fell on my floor. I would try to read linguistic theory and would find myself wondering instead if the lights were on in the bevatron up the hill. When I say that I was wondering if the lights were on in the bevatron you might immediately suspect, if you deal in ideas at all, that I was registering the bevatron as a political symbol, thinking in shorthand about the military-industrial complex and its role in the university community, but you would be wrong. I was only wondering if the lights were on in the bevatron, and how they looked. A physical fact.” (Didion)
Interestingly given her association with a movement which rather explicitly rejects the preeminence of tangible facts for subjectivity, Didion herself describes a personal obsession with the tangible. This is a good example of the internal contradictions that are often present in the personality of a creative according to Csikszentmihalyi. Didion credits her decision to write with her love of make-believe. She recalls that as a child she wanted to become an actor but thought that actors lacked control over the story so she decided that being an author would be better suited for her as she would have more control (Didion qtd. in Art of Fiction 71). Didion's writing process and style are unique. Didion describes wanting her writing to be one long sentence (Didion qtd. in Art of Fiction 71). She employs the technique of fragmentation and ellipse to help convey her ideas. To Didion “Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing.” (Didion qtd. in Trombetta) One part of the writing process that Didion has struggled with, despite claiming she wants to control every aspect of the narrative, is the finality and rigidity of writing, in one essay she notes "What's so hard about that first sentence is that you're stuck with it. Everything else is going to flow out of that sentence. And by the time you've laid down the first two sentences, your options are all gone." (Didion qtd. in Trombetta) In another essay, Didion comments "I think of writing anything at all as a kind of high-wire act. The minute you start putting words on paper you're eliminating possibilities." (Didion qtd. in Trombetta)
Joan Didion’s career is a reflection of how culture and the field can deeply impact the creative process. Didion’s contributions to the field could not have happened without being born out of the culture of the disordered hippie-dom of the 1960s. Additionally, she and her cohorts willingness to reject the traditions of journalism is an example of Western Creativity, as defined by Lubart, as she is willing to move away from tradition to explore new avenues of expression. Her work was helped and shaped by the culture of New Journalism which her work helped to perfect. Didion has a unique perspective on writing, which was influenced heavily by her family life and the world around her. Most specifically this can be seen in the huge impact the death of her husband and daughter in close succession had on her writing. In fact, in writing The Year of Magical Thinking Didion notes that she simply began writing and only subsequently realized she was writing a novel (Roiland). Didion’s voice is unique and powerful, so much so this October Netflix released a documentary on her life and work entitled Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold. Joan Didion is truly a creative voice, shaped by her culture and community, full of internal contradictions, who gave voice to our culture and deserves to be read and remembered.
"Joan Didion, The Art of Nonfiction No. 1." The Paris Review, 2006, issue 176 ed., https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5601/joan-didion-the-art-of-nonfiction-no-1-joan-didion. Accessed 19 Nov. 2017.
"Joan Didion, The Art of Nonfiction No. 71." The Paris Review, 1978, issue 74 ed., https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3439/joan-didion-the-art-of-fiction-no-71-joan-didion. Accessed 19 Nov. 2017.
Trombetta, Sadie. "11 Writing Tips From Joan Didion, Because She Knows A Thing Or Two About It." Bustle, 15 Sept. 2016, https://www.bustle.com/articles/182458-11-writing-tips-from-joan-didion-because-she-knows-a-thing-or-two-about-it. Accessed 19 Nov. 2017.
Didion, Joan. "Why I Write ." Montgomery County Public Schools, New York Times Book Review, 5 Dec. 1976, www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/schools/whitmanhs/academics/english/Why%20I%20Write%20Didion.pdf. Accessed 19 Nov. 2017
Roiland, Josh. "Joan Didion’s journey through New Journalism and personal heartache." , The Washington Post, 28 Aug. 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/didions-journey-through-new-journalism-and-personal-heartache/2015/08/26/925585a6-481c-11e5-846d-02792f854297_story.html?utm_term=.1f291ae73978. Accessed 19 Nov. 2017.
Fakazis, Liz. "New Journalism." Encyclopædia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/New-Journalism. Accessed 20 Nov. 2017.
Menand, Louis. "Out of Bethlehem: The radicalization of Joan Didion." The New Yorker, 24 Aug. 2015, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/24/out-of-bethlehem. Accessed 19 Nov. 2017.
I found your account of Joan Didion's creative contributions to journalism very interesting. I think of Didion as a poetic force, but never thought about how her writing style and its focus on the subjective, individual experience impacted journalism at the time. It's interesting how she was able to fuse two fields, of poetry and journalism, to forge a new form of story-telling, sort of like how we saw Frank Gehry bring art into his architecture.
ReplyDeleteFascinating! The cultural revolution that occurred in 1960s America left no field untouched, but journalism was one such field I did not immediately identify. I certainly understand your connecting Didion and the time in which she worked as extremely important for both the product and the creative process.
ReplyDelete