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Let Me Tell You What I Mean
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About This Book
From one of our most iconic and influential writers: a timeless collection of mostly early pieces that reveal what would become Joan Didion's subjects, including the press, politics, California robber barons, women, and her own self-doubt. Here are six pieces written in 1968 from the "Points West" Saturday Evening Post column Joan Didion shared from 1964 to 1969 with her husband, John Gregory Dunne about: American newspapers; a session with Gamblers Anonymous; a visit to San Simeon; being rejected by Stanford; dropping in on Nancy Reagan, wife of the then-governor of California, while a TV crew filmed her at home; and an evening at the annual reunion of WWII veterans from the 101st Airborne Association at the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas. Here too is a 1976 piece from the New York Times magazine on "Why I Write"; a piece about short stories from New West in 1978; and from The New Yorker, a piece on Hemingway from 1998, and on Martha Stewart from 2000. Each one is classic Didion: incisive, bemused, and stunningly prescient.
Reviews
"Writing, for her, is 'the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind."
"The essays in Let Me Tell You What I Mean are at once funny and touching, roving and no-nonsense."
"whether Didion is at her sharp best or her haughty worst, her touch is light – not superficial so much as glassy, free of density and effusion."
"It's happy news, then, that the book still offers some familiar pleasures."
"This slim collection of mostly early pieces from Joan Didion provides a window into the work of her long, much-admired career."
"Her distinctive rhythms, her ability to distill the essence of a thing: these are refined pleasures indeed ..."
"engrossing, memorable, and delightful ..."
"What's particularly salient is her trademark farsightedness, which is especially striking decades later ..."
"The collection – expansively introduced by Hilton Als – touches on many of the themes that run through Didion's work: the power of illusion [...] the unspoken dynamics of makeshift, often precarious communities; the dangerous thrill of pursuing dreams ..."
"Didion in an essence, elegantly dismantling assumptions and stating discomfiting truths."
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