Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays

Joan Didion’s first work of nonfiction, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, is considered a masterpiece of American literature and the “foundational text” of her oeuvre (New York Times). First published in 1968, the book remains a defining work about the Sixties, about California, about America. More than perhaps any other book, this collection of essays by Didion―one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era―captures her focus on time and place at a unique moment in history. Here, Didion explores people and subjects such as John Wayne, Howard Hughes, growing up in California, the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, and the birth of American counterculture. Didion’s work in Slouching has become a totem for readers “who have lost their sense of place or sense of time or sense of self” (The Rumpus). “In her portraits of people,” writes the New York Times, “Didion is not out to expose but to understand.” Hailed as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time (Time Magazine) and as a classic of New Journalism, Slouching Towards Bethlehem is Didion at her finest.