Was Obama really the most inspiring president in US history? He just had a lot of glittering generalities for his first campaign, and a Republican opponent who made some serious blunders in his second. In between, his instincts were pretty much boilerplate progressive politics of this era, which much of the US loathes. I call him a mediocre POTUS at best.
He was a great orator and the optics were good. That is enough for many people… including the author it seems.
Russell Hamilton
2 years ago
I too liked Joan Didion and read everything she wrote. I must have started reading her around the time I saw the film Nashville, and always associate the two.
But there were other glamorous women writers (Barbara Skelton?) and there are intellectual writers who could not be desexed (Germaine Greer: intellectual and entertainer). The original It Girl might have been Anita Loos (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes – a good read, funny, and James Joyce liked it). But I also think of Martha Gellhorn, Mary McCarthy and so many others. And of course there are funny women writers – I read Margaret Drabble from her first book to her last, and those first books were hilarious. Anne Tyler was also pretty good at light-hearted, amusing novels. Nancy Mitford – funny and glamorous??
I immediately had to Google Quintana Roo (I have been there). What a sad loss for Didion… a husband and a child gone within two years.
vitton
2 years ago
For some reason, I never thought of Joan Didion as a “woman writer.” She was simply a great writer and wrote about the world as it was, not as it should be. But was she “glamorous?” It depends on your definition I guess. If you take the modern definition of “a beautiful woman who wears sexy and attractive clothing and makeup” I’m not so sure. To me, you need a very old definition that defines glamorous as “the mysterious allure of youth,” the way Joseph Conrad used it in his great short story “Youth.’ This is how I saw Joan Didion. This is why I fell in love with her writing. It was something mysterious in her writing, her detachment, her ability to stand ten feet away from a 10-year-old child taking LSD and not interfering but to place us there to experience it. This was the allure that kept me coming back to her writing and to her.
Was Obama really the most inspiring president in US history? He just had a lot of glittering generalities for his first campaign, and a Republican opponent who made some serious blunders in his second. In between, his instincts were pretty much boilerplate progressive politics of this era, which much of the US loathes. I call him a mediocre POTUS at best.
He was a great orator and the optics were good. That is enough for many people… including the author it seems.
I too liked Joan Didion and read everything she wrote. I must have started reading her around the time I saw the film Nashville, and always associate the two.
But there were other glamorous women writers (Barbara Skelton?) and there are intellectual writers who could not be desexed (Germaine Greer: intellectual and entertainer). The original It Girl might have been Anita Loos (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes – a good read, funny, and James Joyce liked it). But I also think of Martha Gellhorn, Mary McCarthy and so many others. And of course there are funny women writers – I read Margaret Drabble from her first book to her last, and those first books were hilarious. Anne Tyler was also pretty good at light-hearted, amusing novels. Nancy Mitford – funny and glamorous??
Beryl Bainbridge…
I immediately had to Google Quintana Roo (I have been there). What a sad loss for Didion… a husband and a child gone within two years.
For some reason, I never thought of Joan Didion as a “woman writer.” She was simply a great writer and wrote about the world as it was, not as it should be. But was she “glamorous?” It depends on your definition I guess. If you take the modern definition of “a beautiful woman who wears sexy and attractive clothing and makeup” I’m not so sure. To me, you need a very old definition that defines glamorous as “the mysterious allure of youth,” the way Joseph Conrad used it in his great short story “Youth.’ This is how I saw Joan Didion. This is why I fell in love with her writing. It was something mysterious in her writing, her detachment, her ability to stand ten feet away from a 10-year-old child taking LSD and not interfering but to place us there to experience it. This was the allure that kept me coming back to her writing and to her.