The White Album: Essays (FSG Classics) [Paperback]

Joan Didion (Author)

Book Description

Series: FSG Classics | Publication Date: November 10, 2009

First published in 1979, The White Album records indelibly the upheavals and aftermaths of the 1960s. Examining key events, figures, and trends of the era—including Charles Manson, the Black Panthers, and the shopping mall—through the lens of her own spiritual confusion, Joan Didion helped to define mass culture as we now understand it. Written with a commanding sureness of tone and linguistic precision, The White Album is a central text of American reportage and a classic of American autobiography.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“[Didion] can strike at the heart, or the absurdity, of a matter in our contemporary wasteland with quick, graceful strokes.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“All of the essays—even the slightest—manifest not only [Didion’s] intelligence, but an instinct for details that continue to emit pulsations in the reader’s memory and a style that is spare, subtly musical in its phrasing and exact. Add to these her highly vulnerable sense of herself, and the result is a voice like no other in contemporary journalism.” —Robert Towers, The New York Times Book Review

“Didion manages to make the sorry stuff of troubled times (bike movies, for instance, and Bishop James Pike) as interesting and suggestive as the monuments that win her dazzled admiration (Georgia O’Keeffe, the Hoover Dam, the mountains around Bogota). . . A timely and elegant collection.” —The New Yorker

About the Author

Joan Didion is highly regarded as a writer of both nonfiction and fiction and received the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2007. She lives in New York City.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (November 10, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374532079
• ISBN-13: 978-0374532079
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #13,491 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #54 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Essays

More About the Author

Joan Didion was born in California and lives in New York City. She is the author of five novels and seven previous books of nonfiction. Joan Didion's Where I Was From, Political Fictions, The Last Thing He Wanted, After Henry, Miami, Democracy, Salvador, A Book of Common Prayer, and Run River are available in Vintage paperback.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intelligent writing on the interesting sixties and seventies, November 10, 2011

By 

Brian A. Hill (Austin, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The White Album: Essays (FSG Classics) (Paperback)

I feel very fortunate to have been turned on to this book and, more importantly, this writer! Many of the stories told have the feel of someone sitting on the edge of the scene, looking in on many of the interesting people and events of the late 1960s and into the 70s. It's a fun perspective. After reading lots of sixties memoir-type writings, I'd say this is a unique one. These essays seem to be covering topics she'd previously written on as a journalist.. so they're memoirs, in a way. With some familiar characters -- Jim Morrison, Eldridge Cleaver, Nancy Reagan, etc. -- and others I'm just coming to learn about, new and uncommon scenes are played out. In other words, they're mostly stories I haven't read yet from a subject that's maybe overly covered. It's a quick read, but an entertaining one from someone who knew how to describe her surroundings during an interesting time. I will now go looking for more Joan Didion books...

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Joan Didion is a literary treasure, November 23, 2011

By 

L. Lindisch "Actor/model/waiter" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The White Album: Essays (FSG Classics) (Paperback)

Whether it is travel, California, marriage or motherhood, Joan Didion offer incisive and thought-provoking prose in an style than cannot be copied. She is now older and extremely frail. A final work would be wonderful.