Word: didions
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...dotcom bust. Staggering budget deficits. A hellzapoppin' gubernatorial recall. What other misfortune could happen to California? Well, Joan Didion, who was born and raised there, could write an elegantly acerbic book arguing that the sustaining myths by which the state defines itself are false, self-deluding and corrupt. Where I Was From (Knopf; 226 pages) is that book, and Governor-elect Schwarzenegger, for one, can give thanks that it was written too soon to include...
...fundamental California myth is that noble 19th century pioneers braved the Sierras in order to cultivate a golden promised land. Not quite, says Didion. The great crossing was often "a mean scrambling for survival, a blind flight." And what of the early Californians' inspirational unity with nature? "[They] took what they could," writes Didion, "and...set about selling the rest." As for their vaunted individualism, the state's residents have always been largely subsidized by the Federal Government, right down to the "sad, bad times" of the present, when "virtually every county [is]...dependent on defense contracts...
...Didion makes these verdicts personal by presenting her own family--Californians for five generations--as prime embodiments of the state's ambiguous destiny. Nor does she spare herself: she offers a probing critique of what she now considers her wrongheaded nostalgia for the old California in her 1963 novel, Run River. Where I Was From, in fact, is "an exploration into my own confusions about the place and the way in which I grew...
...Joan Didion: I think it is desirable. Basically with a third party we might have a chance at a two-party system again. I don’t think Nader ran a particularly strong campaign. There’s a tendency for both parties, for everybody in the process, to treat a third party candidate as a spoiler. And as long as that mentality is with us, the third party candidate doesn’t really get a fair hearing...
...Joan Didion...