
South and West
From a Notebook
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Narrated by:
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Kimberly Farr
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Nathaniel Rich
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By:
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Joan Didion
About this listen
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
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A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Joan Didion's Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the listener. Set in a place beyond good and evil—literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul—it remains more than three decades after its original publication a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis.
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Didion is a genius
- By Rogue415 on 04-09-25
By: Joan Didion
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Didion and Babitz
- By: Lili Anolik
- Narrated by: Lili Anolik, Emma Roberts
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Could you write what you write if you weren’t so tiny, Joan? —Eve Babitz, in a letter to Joan Didion, 1972. Joan Didion, revealed at last… Eve Babitz died on December 17, 2021. Found in the wrack, ruin, and filth of her apartment, a stack of boxes packed by her mother decades before. The boxes were pristine, the seals of duct tape unbroken. Inside, a lost world. This world turned for a certain number of years in the late sixties and early seventies, and centered on a two-story rental in a down-at-heel section of Hollywood.
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I’m still Team Joan
- By Dorothy L. Lipman on 11-16-24
By: Lili Anolik
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Run, River
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Holly Cate
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Joan Didion's electrifying first novel is a haunting portrait of a marriage whose wrong turns and betrayals are at once absolutely idiosyncratic and a razor-sharp commentary on the history of California. Everett McClellan and his wife, Lily, are the great-grandchildren of pioneers, and what happens to them is a tragic epilogue to the pioneer experience, a story of murder and betrayal that only Didion could tell with such nuance, sympathy, and suspense.
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Thought-provoking, riveting, memorable
- By Avalon on 08-23-13
By: Joan Didion
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A Book of Common Prayer
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Marisa Vitali
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Writing with the telegraphic swiftness and microscopic sensitivity that have made her one of our most distinguished journalists, Joan Didion creates a shimmering novel of innocence and evil. A Book of Common Prayer is the story of two American women in the derelict Central American nation of Boca Grande. Grace Strasser-Mendana controls much of the country's wealth and knows virtually all of its secrets; Charlotte Douglas knows far too little.
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Strong tale badly told
- By A reader in Berkeley on 06-04-17
By: Joan Didion
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After Henry
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Hess
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In her latest forays into the American scene, Joan Didion covers ground from Washington to Los Angeles, from a TV producer's gargantuan "manor" to the racial battlefields of New York's criminal courts. At each stop she uncovers the mythic narratives that elude other observers: Didion tells us about the fantasies the media construct around crime victims and presidential candidates; she gives us new interpretations of the stories of Nancy Reagan and Patty Hearst; she charts America's rollercoaster ride through evanescent booms and hard times that won't go away.
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It'll blow a hole in your retina
- By Darwin8u on 10-03-15
By: Joan Didion
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The Year of Magical Thinking
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Barbara Caruso
- Length: 5 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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"Life changes fast....You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends." These were among the first words Joan Didion wrote in January 2004. Her daughter was lying unconscious in an intensive care unit, a victim of pneumonia and septic shock. Her husband, John Gregory Dunne, was dead. The night before New Year's Eve, while they were sitting down to dinner, he suffered a massive and fatal coronary. The two had lived and worked side by side for nearly 40 years.
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Great book to Read, but I didn’t like it
- By Michael on 05-08-15
By: Joan Didion
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The Year of Magical Thinking
- By: Joan Didion
- Narrated by: Vanessa Redgrave
- Length: 1 hr and 28 mins
- Original Recording
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When celebrated writer Joan Didion’s life was altered forever, she wrote a new chapter. In this adaptation of her iconic memoir, Didion transforms the story of the shattering loss of her husband and their daughter into a one-woman play performed by Tony Award winner Vanessa Redgrave, who originated the role on Broadway in 2007.
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Difficult story, but worth it
- By Maya on 08-07-20
By: Joan Didion
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Public Enemies
- America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34
- By: Bryan Burrough
- Narrated by: Campbell Scott
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Abridged
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In Public Enemies, Bryan Burrough strips away a thick layer of myths put out by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI to tell the full story of the most spectacular crime wave in American history, the two-year battle between the young Hoover and an assortment of criminals who became national icons: John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the Barkers.
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Need the unabridged version
- By Craig Hansen on 07-28-04
By: Bryan Burrough
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The Devil Behind the Badge
- The Horrifying Twelve Days of the Border Patrol Serial Killer
- By: Rick Jervis
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Melissa Ramirez, Claudine Anne Luera, Guiselda Hernandez, and Janelle Ortiz were four marginalized women striving to make ends meet as sex workers. They looked out for one another. But they would soon share a connection that none of them could have imagined. When Melissa was found dead, the other three women were on edge but assumed they were safe. Twelve days later, they too were dead and police had detained an unlikely suspect—Juan David Ortiz, a ten-year veteran of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
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Well researched
- By Tiffany on 10-07-24
By: Rick Jervis
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Shake the Devil Off
- A True Story of the Murder That Rocked New Orleans
- By: Ethan Brown
- Narrated by: James Avery
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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They looked like a slightly mischievous version of the all-American couple: a handsome army veteran and his gorgeous artist girlfriend. Zackery Bowen, after completing his tour of Iraq, came home to New Orleans, and in two weeks before Hurricane Katrina, he met Addie Hall. Their improvised, hard-partying endurance during and after the storm inspired news outlets around the world to feature the couple as the personification of the indomitable spirit of New Orleans. But beneath the surface, trouble was brewing.
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Avoid this one!
- By Robin on 08-08-10
By: Ethan Brown
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The Last Love Song
- A Biography of Joan Didion
- By: Tracy Daugherty
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 26 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Joan Didion lived a life in the public and private eye with her late husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, whom she met while the two were working in New York City, when Didion was at Vogue and Dunne was writing for Time. They became wildly successful writing partners when they moved to Los Angeles and cowrote screenplays and adaptations together. Didion is well known for her literary journalistic style in both fiction and nonfiction.
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Riveted for 1591 miles
- By Kaysi12 on 04-11-16
By: Tracy Daugherty
What listeners say about South and West
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Tom
- 03-22-23
Fairly dated but disappointing observations.
I read this out of interest in her reactions to the South of 1970. I arrived in Alabama in 1977 and thought I might compare her insights with my own.
While I came South prepared to impose my NYC Worldview on the poor Rubes, I soon realized that the folks I met and worked with were decent, hard-working people with a lot of self-knowledge of their history, a real love of their Land and Community and a genuine desire to build a Good Life for their Families. For the most part they knew their shortcomings but resented being looked down upon by more Cosmopolitan types, but didn’t want to be New York or L.A. They wanted to preserve the good parts of the South they loved and move into this New Era along with the rest of the Country.
Unfortunately, Didion didn’t let any of that dent her imperious attitude while she luxuriated in the stares her bikini and long, straight hair earned her. I didn’t expect such a shallow reaction. Maybe she reread her notes and realized how she came across and decided against publication. Her reputation has survived because of that decision.
Three stars for writing about a place I know well. I paid little attention to her few L.A. remarks. ***
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- Carole T.
- 03-11-17
"Notes" Are Not a Book
Joan Didion is an elegant writer. Her observations are crystal clear and spot-on. So it is in this "book". Although the notes (especially from the South) are decades old (her trip was for a month in the 1970's), the knack she has for quick and accurate characterization and insight are evident.
This insight is also dated. The introduction and advertisement for this book refer to its relevance in today's political climate - Didion, it seems, was able to "see the future" in the old, weary, and cynical South rather than in the forward-looking West. That claim only goes so far, because it becomes evident very quickly that the South she visited for a short while then has changed in many ways.
Can these observations be interpreted as a foreshadow of today's divisions in the country? Sure, in a way. I'd argue that the real enlightenment here is in realizing just how the casual judgment and amused contempt Didion shows for the Southerners she meets and observes (between visits with celebrated writers, that is) certainly has helped foster the seemingly insurmountable anger by those who see themselves as overlooked by America. In her eagerness to hop a plane home to the West, she is a perfect example of the "red States'" view of the dismissive Coastal city intellectual.
I'm not from the South, and I share some of Didion's regional biases. Although drawn with appreciation and some sympathy, the people she meets and describes in her notes and anecdotes are presented as local color - as stereotypical "characters" of the rural South. And the "West" part of the volume is more an add-on than a real analysis of contrasts or differences between the regions
It's not fair, of course, to assume any book or article Joan Didion might have produced from her notes at the time would have been about stereotypes or filled with judgment. Yet, in this form, there it is!
I'm afraid that, despite the respect I have for the author, I can't recommend this book. It's very short and disconnected (understandably; these are "notes") and, it seems to me, really just adds up to an excuse to publish and sell an incomplete, unfinished manuscript as a book.
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- Jessica Paullus
- 03-29-18
Robotic performance
I couldn’t make it past the first few sentences of the first chapter. The female narrator sounds like a robot.
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-10-19
it's not good...
I couldn't finish it. How did this even get published? This was my first book by Joan Didion... It really turned me off to her as a writer in general, though I have heard her other writings are better. Save your time and money. Don't read/listen to this.
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