joan didion - Jezebel

posts about #joandidion more →
Style Tips From Tippi Hedren's Model Life
Saint Joan: Young Women And The Cult Of Didion
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
More Arrests In Lindsay Burglary; Cross Snorted Coke In Front Of Obama
Kanye West Headed To Court
Woman Waives Anonymity To Say, "I Was Raped By My Father."
This Week We Discovered Shoving Garlic Up Our Hoohas Was Srsly "Uncool"
Joan Didion Is Kind Of A Downer About The Election

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Tippi Hedren
12/02/09

In reply to Style Tips From Tippi Hedren's Model Life
It's true, my glamorous lifestyle is a LOT of work.
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Questioning Everything
12/02/09

@Tippi Hedren: You wear it well!
P.S. How are the kitties?
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Edited by Questioning Everything at 12/02/09 3:44 PM

MargaretMoony
12/02/09

In reply to Style Tips From Tippi Hedren's Model Life
Heh, I love the Tampax ad.
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hello.kitty
12/02/09

@MargaretMoony: Yes, that is the most fascinating piece of this story! Somehow I have trouble accepting that prim 50's housewives--who undoubtedly vacuum in high heels--would be, uh 'open' to using tampons!
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Jenna
12/02/09

@hello.kitty: BUT THEIR 'INTERNAL' PROTECTION IS SO DAINTY AND DISCREET!
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LucilleMcGillicuddy
12/02/09

@MargaretMoony: did you ever read nora ephron's "heartburn"? her parents get rich buying tampax stock. it's a good, quick read.
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Edited by LucilleMcGillicuddy at 12/02/09 3:21 PM

MargaretMoony
12/02/09

@LucilleMcGillicuddy: Nice! When I was younger, I always told my parents I would invest in two things: condoms and tampons because people would ALWAYS need them.
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hfree
12/02/09

In reply to Style Tips From Tippi Hedren's Model Life
Not to beat a dead horse, but I'm guessing a 1953 size 7 is a size 0 or 2 today, just based on the copy here.
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Aesop's Foibles. YES.
12/02/09

In reply to Style Tips From Tippi Hedren's Model Life
I noticed in #3 it says "Tiny size-seven Tippi". I will refrain from making a sizes have changed joke. I just wanted to point that out.
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curiousgeorgiana
12/02/09

In reply to Style Tips From Tippi Hedren's Model Life
Need the polka dot dress in number 4. Immediately.
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netfe
12/02/09

In reply to Style Tips From Tippi Hedren's Model Life
i was wondering about the earn extra money add in #5. what do you think it is for, and also - do you think it's too late to apply?
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Zombie Ms. Skittles promoted this comment netfe was starred netfe was unstarred

Zombie Ms. Skittles
12/02/09

@netfe: I think it was selling magazines door to door.
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netfe
12/02/09

@Zombie Ms. Skittles: but they say from my home when ever it's comfterbale to me! i feel defraud! damn you Cosmo!
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Mary McCarthyite
12/02/09

In reply to Style Tips From Tippi Hedren's Model Life
Is she getting ready for bed in that getup in No. 7?

Also, I love the Tampax ad in No. 6.
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Benevolent_Dictatrix (patently absurd)
12/02/09

In reply to Style Tips From Tippi Hedren's Model Life
My, how The Perfect Costume for Travel has changed. Now it's all yoga pants all the time.
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SouthernSatine
12/02/09

@Benevolent_Dictatrix (patently absurd): Um, can we talk about how the "Perfect Costume for Travel" cost her EIGHTEEN DOLLARS!?
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netfe
12/02/09

@SouthernSatine: that is prefect!
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Understater
12/02/09

In reply to Style Tips From Tippi Hedren's Model Life
I used to think she was a poor man's Grace Kelly, but Marnie proved me wrong. She was great in that.
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katie.scarlett.o'hara
12/02/09

@Understater: I LOVE that movie. It's so strange and wonderful. The Birds gets all the attention, but Marnie is much more interesting, imo.
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LBB
12/02/09

@katie.scarlett.o'hara: Oh my god, people who have heard of Marnie. SO weird and creepy and awesome.
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Wit is periodically disensouled
12/02/09

@LBB: It really is one of Hitchcock's most disquieting films... and possibly for that reason also one of my favorites.
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LBB
12/02/09

@Wit is periodically disensouled: I know right? My all-time favorite Hitchcock is Spellbound, which has a few similarities (which I will not detail because they are spoilers). I'll cop to never having seen The Birds, but there's so much hype surrounding that movie that I don't think I would be able to respond to the text itself, I would be responding to everything I've heard about it over the years.
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katie.scarlett.o'hara
12/02/09

@LBB: Oooh, I love Spellbound! Young Gregory Peck and Dali dream sequences, please and thank you!

I really don't get the big fuss over The Birds. Maybe I need to watch it again, but aside from a few really great scenes, it never struck me as particularly fascinating. The plot is so vague (some might call it mysterious) that it just becomes dull, in my eyes.
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LBB
12/02/09

@katie.scarlett.o'hara: Mmmm, Gregory Peck. And the ever-amazing Ingrid Bergman, of course.
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whynotshesaid
11/19/09

In reply to Saint Joan: Young Women And The Cult Of Didion
I really got into Joan Didion in my mid-20s, right as I was starting journalism school, and she is one of the handful of writers whose style makes appearances in my own writing. I have read nearly everything she's written. While I tend to appreciate her more from an intellectual and stylistic point of view, some of her stuff has had a very powerful emotional impact on me, particularly her essay "On Self-Respect," which I read shortly after I left my ex-husband and our abusive relationship. Her words so clearly illuminated the fact that I conducted my life the way I did because I lacked self-respect, because I was constantly searching for validation outside of myself and always coming up short. I can hardly think of another piece of writing - perhaps "Of Human Bondage" by Somerset Maugham? - that had such a profound impact on who I am as a person.

That said, I don't really understand the hero worship aspect the writer is referring to. I know it exists with some, and I think it can be attributable to what Didion's career represents - that a talented, smart, somewhat flawed young woman can become one of the most important figures in American letters. I am hardpressed to think of another woman who occupies such a place in our culture. It's not really all that different from generations who idolized Kerouac or Salinger or whoever. They don't just represent their own literary and cultural achievements, but also what is possible for others. So if I had to guess I would say that might be part of what is going on here. But then again, I am not the kind of person who is often starstruck or sent into tears by the mere presence of another person, no matter how much I admire their work.
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Maggie Glass
11/19/09

In reply to Saint Joan: Young Women And The Cult Of Didion
I'm going to go ahead and say that I couldn't get into Slouching Toward Bethlehem at all. I found her voice to be sort of self-righteous in a weird way, and just not relatable. Any others out there? Or is this like when I say that I find The Godfather to be overrated?
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girlscoutcookie is back from hiatus
11/18/09

In reply to Saint Joan: Young Women And The Cult Of Didion
I couldn't make it through The Year of Magical Thinking. Couldn't even make it through the first chapter. Too hard. But my mom read it, and our conversation about it made me realize that it's something that maybe I'll only be able to read after my parents are gone, because now that's a vague idea I don't want to consider possible, but then it'll be a concrete reality I will already have faced. I don't know. What I did read just broke my heart.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem, though. Amazing from start to finish. Especially the one about Joan Baez.

Plus, Joan Didion was in my sorority, which is my favorite thing about my sorority, because of how she's awesome.
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Trulymadlyme
11/18/09

@girlscoutcookie is back from hiatus: Especially the one about Joan Baez.

Especially since her observation about Baez would apply to Obama. That is what is interesting about her writing.
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girlleastlikelyto
11/18/09

In reply to Saint Joan: Young Women And The Cult Of Didion
I do look at writers like Didion -- and Munro and Atwood and Le Guin -- as an example of my mother's generation, but it doesn't offer me any insight into my mother. Mostly, it makes me wonder how the woman who taught me "A man doesn't want to come home to a dirty house" could come from the same age as these women. (My mother, to be fair, is closer to Atwood's age than to the other writers.)

So I suppose I look at these women as sort of alternative mothers -- what if I had been raised by a version of my mother who had that kind of insight, that need to look below the surface, to not just accept things the way they are? But mostly I admire them as writers and intellects. I can't imagine being maudlin at a Didion reading. Her work just doesn't inspire that kind of emotion. She engages my mind, and I appreciate that a lot more.
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cirocco promoted this comment Edited by girlleastlikelyto at 11/18/09 5:11 PM girlleastlikelyto was starred

hughman
11/18/09

In reply to Saint Joan: Young Women And The Cult Of Didion
joan didion was one of my writer idols in high school (another was oriana fallaci). i was a gay boy in the south and it was the 70s. needless to say, my parents thought i was crazy. and thus i moved away as soon as i graduated.
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Trulymadlyme
11/18/09

In reply to Saint Joan: Young Women And The Cult Of Didion
I didn't expect to like her writing. In fact, I absolutely hated "Play It As It Lays." But right around the time when I was 28, single, living in the city, partying a shit ton, working a job where I was well paid, but unfulfilled, I randomly stumbled onto "Goodbye to All That" and realized exactly what was happening to me and what happened to me the previous ten years because the essay's observations were just so fucking spot on and clear. The fact that she wrote it in 1968 and I read it in 2008, still shocks me. I don't see writing like that much anymore.
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L'Adelina
11/19/09

@Trulymadlyme: "Goodbye to All That" is one of the most perfect essays she's ever written. I read it first my freshman year of college and loved it, but didn't really get it until I re-read it six years later, and wow, it is shocking how well it still reads.
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