Slouching Towards Bethlehem

"This is a collection of essays by Didion, based in California and covering the second half of the sixties. I like Didion for her writing style and her control over her material, but also for the way in which she captures a historical moment. In this book she really conveys the sense of significant cultural change that America was undergoing at that time. If you’re writing about China or Egypt right now, you’re also aware of this feeling. These are times that have a certain weight, a significance, that isn’t common. As a writer you want to understand this moment and capture its resonance. There’s a mesmeric quality to her writing. She uses a lot of short sentences; there’s a strong sense of rhythm. It’s similar to some writing patterns of McPhee, and both writers are descendents of Hemingway. Hemingway’s fiction has a strong connection to journalism and to nonfiction – it has something to do with the way Hemingway stories are closely observed, and the types of narrators that he uses. I think there’s a reason why some of these nonfiction writers picked up his rhythms and his sense of language. Joan Didion has a really strong first person voice. She’s having breakdowns at various points. But that’s part of her story. She’s part of this craziness of the sixties, so it’s appropriate. But using the first person is not all or nothing. There are degrees of it. You can make your voice really strong, or you can step back, and you can shift the intensity and presence of your voice throughout a book. McPhee pretty much always uses the first person, but he rarely tells a lot about himself. He often includes long sections that don’t use the “I” at all. I believe that the first person is a tool which the writer should think about seriously. In my opinion it’s usually something that you want to use, because it helps to orient the reader. It reminds the reader of this subjectivity, of the fact that you are the filter. And I think it’s critical in a place like China or Egypt, where there is always a bit of tension or distance. I observe as closely as I can, I talk and I listen, I learn the local language – but I’m not going to step inside a character’s head."