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Let Me Tell You What I Mean
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50/99
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46/99
Readers' Rating Index
83/99
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98/99
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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
"remarkably consistent and relevant throughout ..."
"The 'energy and shimmer' of her prose are fully evident in this volume of previously uncollected pieces, written from 1968 to 2000."
"less a selected essays than a rejected essays, a director's un-cut of her older work."
"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's pen is like a periscope onto the creative mind — and, as this collection demonstrates, it always has been."
"Not unexpectedly, Let Me Tell You What I Mean is secondary Didion at best, but even minor offerings from this prose master are hard to dismiss—and equally hard to resist."
"As always, the writing is captivating."
"Slim and elegant as Didion's public persona remains at age 86 ..."
"Reading Didion's latest collection is enough to convince anyone that her writing is often more evocative than empathetic, more interested in style than in meaning."
"Despite its brevity, Let Me Tell You What I Mean hints at some of the subjects that would preoccupy Didion, including life in her native California and the craft of writing itself ..."
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