We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction [Hardcover]

This book came up while I was buying "Political Fictions" for a friend of mine, and I was worried I'd missed something, but actually it's every nonfiction book she's written up through 2003. I've savored every word of Didion's nonfiction since reading "Goodbye To All That" (the final essay of Slouching Toward Bethlehem) in a nonfiction class in college , and she's never let me down. It's not simply that Didion is one of our greatest writers, its that her style is so incisive and unforgettable because she works with only a whisper of the incredible effort and vision she creates, she undoes the reader with observations that don't appear to be observations - she makes her conclusions about culture, nature, and humanity the only conclusions, and she can devastate, over and over again, in a single sentence. It's crazy to think of all of the nonfiction books I've bought of hers fitting concisely into under 1200 pages, but how lucky for the people that own this book to be able to do what took me years to do - track down each piece and appreciate it separately (except for the uber-successful Year of Magical Thinking, which still requires its own purchase). I hope readers take the time to appreciate the differences in each work, to consider how time and how Didion's consciousness adjusted from one book to the next, but the important thing is that she continue to be read and enjoyed. Here, you can read a piece like "Goodbye to All That," or "Quiet Days In Malibu," or that devastating final chapter of Where I Was From to hear that beautiful, plaintive, liberating sad voice, and then follow it up with Salvador or "In The Realm of the Fisher King" or "Vichy Washington" and appreciate a cunning that rips into politics and the culture at large. One strange review on here stated that it was unlikely Didion's work would outlast her life much, and while I don't know that to be untrue (I mean, she's still alive), one thing I've loved about her is that any contextual writing she does - writing about Joan Baez in the 60's, say, or seeing Georgia O'Keefe in the 70's, or Miami, or El Salvador, or Reagan or Hawaii - feels current because it speaks to the human observation watching it occur, and because the culture we make up (the "stories we tell ourselves") around whatever's occuring always remain the same. I wasn't alive or cognizant when much of what she writes about occurs, but to me, Didion's one of the great writers that made me feel connected to the world, feel less alone, and feel thrilled at every topic she's discussed.

Joan Didion is the one writer I can return to again and again. I marvel at each paragraph, each sentence. Her voice is unique and though she has many imitators she has no equal. I still regularly reread The White Album which I discovered as a teenager over 20 years ago. This it a beautiful edition and a wonderful collection.

Joan wrote her best when she wrote about California. She's in a league of her own. She writes about California the way it is,the strangest foriegn country in the nation. She gets at the psychic truth of her subject, which is no small thing. One of the very few true writers,ever.