Tag Archives: Joan Didion Baez Hughes American Dream California Culture Politics Freedom

In Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion‘s nonfictional profiles often serve as a commentary on the American dream in regards to California culture. She develops this complex idea by examining the personal, social, and/or political landscape of Carmel Valley and the “underside of Hollywood,” for instance, and pays great attention to the noteworthy figures who shaped the ideologies of these cultural hotspots. In her essays, “Where the Kissing Never Stops” and “7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 28,” she analyzes, respectively, Joan Baez and Howard Hughes, and contemplates their motivations and idiosyncrasies as people, as well as how their personality traits historically connected to larger idealistic undertones in California at the time. The two were radically different people when focused upon, but a vital parallel between the two remains: they both were eager to express their true-blue American freedom in all its varying forms. Continue reading