Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion
FSG Classics, 238 pages, 1968
First of all I want to say that this book cover is so hip that it's going to be featured (along with my water bottle and San Francisco postcards) in an upcoming magazine article about what gaijin ladies carry in their purses. Okay. Anyway, I had a feeling that this was going to be a difficult book to read, because I have been crazy homesick lately and Didion describes California with a precision that's both photographic and deeply insightful. Surprisingly, the title piece (which is about the Haight-Ashbury in 1967) didn't really bother me at all, since it bears no resemblance whatsoever to the San Francisco I know. Notes from a Native Daughter, though, was every drive I've ever taken up and down the 5 and every summer I spent in Folsom hanging out at supermarkets and dreaming up ways to escape the Central Valley, and I kind of want to make everyone I know in Japan read it so that they understand where I'm from. (But only because I doubt I could get them all to read East of Eden.)
Next up: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
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