People often confuse New Journalists with actual journalists. Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem is never meant to be a series of hard-hitting journalism, otherwise Didion would not reveal that she is “bad at interviewing people” (xiv) and that she dreads the whole process. No, it is a series of very personal accounts that aim to reveal California and in turn the state of the world as Didion herself sees it. Granted, the insistence to use quotes and source them in “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream” may make it seem as though Didion is presenting the facts as they are and allowing the reader to come to their own conclusions, but to focus only on the incident about which she is writing is to do a horrible injustice to Didion as an author. Continue reading →