The most important aspect of creative nonfiction is truth, which is closely followed by honesty. Without these two requirements, nonfiction would cease being nonfiction and become fiction instead. The difficult part of writing with truth and honesty is that life is very messy. There’s no way to approach something in a clear cut manner, and if the event does seem clear and simple, the author isn’t digging into it enough. As Joan Didion said in the opening of Slouching Towards Bethlehem, “writers are always selling somebody out.” The use of this quote in the introduction helps frame the reader in the knowledge that the writing will not always be clear or what they might expect. It serves as a reminder that creative nonfiction focuses on real people and real stories. Continue reading →

When Joan Didion says “writers are always selling somebody out,” she is correct to an extent. Journalists and writers have an agenda of their own that may or may not run parallel to the agenda of the subjects they write about. That said, I don’t see myself volunteering to be interviewed by Joan Didion in the near future. She is particularly incisive and has a keen ability to sneak into the more desperate sides of everyone she writes about. But more than that, all of her essays are deeply critical. Didion approaches her writing as an opportunity to show the insanity of the world she lives in, and has no interest in showing the sunnier sides of her subjects. Didion even leans a little too hard into this. Parts of her essays read as dated today. When she paints the absurdity of the culture she lives in, you can also spot where she is shaped by it.

Continue reading →

Joan Didion’s collection of essays in Slouching Towards Bethlehem sheds light on the true essence of the counterculture during the 1960’s. Her essay topics range from obsessions with over-inflated cultural icons to radical activists, such as the Diggers, to the biggest stereotype of the era, acid-tripping hippies. Each essay in the collection opens up a door to all the different corners of life during the sixties in and around San Francisco. And to achieve this, Didion did as any dedicated reporter would do and threw herself right into the midst of it all. At the end of the preface, she even goes as far as to claims that “writers are always selling somebody out.” Continue reading →

re·port  (rəˈpôrt) verb

1.give a spoken or written account of something that one has observed, heard, done, or investigated.
“the representative reported a decline in milk and meat production”
synonyms: announce, describe, give an account of, detail, outline, communicate, divulge, disclose, reveal, make public, publish, broadcast, proclaim, publicize
“the government reported a fall in inflation”

Dictionaries will tell you that by labeling herself as a reporter, Joan Didion is correct.  She meets the standards because she uses real facts and real events when she describes the way people in the west coast were living and thinking in the 60s.  But just because Didion can technically be defined as a reporter, does that necesarily mean it’s the most accurate way to characterize her writing?  When we think of a report, we tend to think of things that we would normally hope to be unbiased sources of information; thorough analyzations of factual occurrences, provided to us with minimal disclosure.  I’m pretty sure that doesn’t exactly line up with whatever Joan Didion does. Continue reading →

My kneejerk reaction to the statement “writers are always selling someone out” was based within the confines of John Wayne: A Love Song. In such an essay Didion sells herself out first by revealing how she has lived so long in awe of this man, but in the second part of the essay she breaks the cult of personality surrounding him, which would be considered by most to be not doing John Wayne a solid in the presentation of a now ill and cancer stricken Duke. Didion betrays the popular idea of Wayne in simply her humanization of him/added complexity—she doesn’t destroy, buy offers a grounded lens. Didion’s feelings that she is “selling out” by providing her own representation is complex; the selling out does not entail what most of us would consider—like a cheating husband, or not filing taxes—Didion’s selling out is mostly concerned with attention and involving herself in a subject’s life. A need to feel invisible is vital to Didion’s level of ability: ““My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does”—her “advantage” allows her to see how people really are and in turn break preconceived notions of self or public perception.

Continue reading →

In the preface Joan Didion almost describes herself as a deceiving person, and implies that people that she is interviewing occasionally confide in her but she wants to be remembered as a reporter, which often means the person being interviewed is going to be shed in a negative light.Apparently Joan Didion is perpetually selling somebody out. I find this to simply not be the case. Yes, many could argue that she does not reserve judgement in a majority of her essays but there are a few examples which prove this wrong.

Continue reading →

I feel as though Didion, in describing herself in the preface, is in a way preparing the reader for the worst. That’s not to say she doesn’t have faith in her writing abilities (though all writers surely have some doubts), but she’s letting them know what the truth of it is. She says how she uses her small size and her mannerisms to her advantage. It’s as though she’s saying, “here’s what I do. I’m not proud of it, but I’m not ashamed of it either.” She knows that she seems rather non-threatening, and I feel as though she may feel a little guilty about that.

Continue reading →