SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM

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Nonfiction
We smiled and drank the Pouilly-Fruisse

SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM

By Joan Didion
354 pp. Picador Modern Classics

Reviewed by Sue Ellis

In Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion has amassed a memorable collection of essays formerly published during the turbulent 1960s and early 70s.

Born in Sacramento, California, Didion graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1956 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. During her senior year, she won first place in an essay contest sponsored by Vogue, and subsequently went on to work for them for the next several years, moving from her home in Sacramento to New York City.

From there she married, moved back to Sacramento and began writing essays for some of the most successful publications of the time, including The New York Times, Holiday, The American Scholar, Vogue, and The Saturday Evening Post.

Sharply observant, she was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time and the right credentials to witness and comment upon the social changes that were taking place.

There is a remarkable story about Howard Hughes, his crazy and unlikely lifestyle. She visited the set of a Hollywood’s The Sons of Katie Elder and wrote about meeting John Wayne and Dean Martin, a story so heartfelt and accurate that it hurts to read it. Here’s an excerpt as she describes a memorable farewell dinner with John Wayne and his wife, Pilar:

 We had a lot of drinks and I lost the sense that the face across the table was in certain ways more familiar than my husband’s.

And then something happened. Suddenly the room seemed suffused with the dream and I could not think why. Three men appeared out of nowhere, playing guitars. Pilar Wayne leaned slightly forward, and John Wayne lifted his glass almost imperceptibly toward her. “We’ll need some Pouilly-Fuisse for the rest of the table,” he said, “and some red Bordeaux for the Duke.” We all smiled, and drank the Pouilly-Fruisse for the rest of the table and the Red Bordeaux for the Duke, and all the whilethe men with guitars kept playing, until finally I realized what they were playing, what they had been playing all along: “The Red River Valley” and the theme from The High and the Mighty. They did not quite get the beat right, but even now I can hear them, in another country and a long time later, even as I tell you this.

Perhaps the most interesting essay, the one that carries the same name as the title of her collection, Slouching Toward Bethlehem, is Didion’s visit to Haight Ashbury, seeing for herself what was taking place. She compares it to The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats. Here’s an excerpt from that poem:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer:

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of the innocence is drowned:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Didion writes personal essays as well, stories about the lifelong pull she felt between the two cities she loved, about the parties she attended as a young woman in New York, how she never got around to completely furnishing her apartment because she was so busy, and what she learned on assignments.

After several essays, readers will not only learn a lot (or re-remember), but begin to like the woman whose eyes were always wide open.

Slouching Toward Bethlehem is part of a collection of Picador’s offering of modern classics. They are small enough to fit in your pocket, and a good choice for visually interesting display on a bookshelf. I’d recommend this fascinating little collection of essays to anyone.