Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly One of America's premier essayists discusses Patty Hearst, the Central Park ogger, the 1988 Hollywood writers' strike, Reagan and Bush. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Eleven essays, mostly from the New York Review of Books and the New Yorker , are collected here in honor of Henry Robbins, an early, influential editor of Didion who died recently. The pieces zigzag through politics and the current events of the last decade, ranging from California to New York and taking aim at the power hungry, at sentimentality, at the manipulation of language. We see George Bush using a trip to Jordan as a "photo-op" to make him look like a man of action and reporters willing to do what politicans want in return for special privileges. The Bradley/Yaroslavsky mayoral race and the rape of a Central Park jogger lead Didion to discuss the characters of Los Angeles and New York City. Didion's journalistic essays are often considered her best writing, and this representative sample will be appreciated by readers who like newsworthy reading.- Nancy Shires, East Carolina Univ., Greenville, N.C.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus Reviews Didion's latest collection of previously published articles- -her first since The White Album (1979)--reminds us that she's truly one of the premier essayists of our time. For all the disconnectedness she discerns throughout our public life, her prose, in its very complexity, beautifully plays against her subjects. In these pieces, mostly from The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker, Didion artfully points out the ``chasm'' between ``actual life and its preferred narratives.'' Organized by place (Washington, D.C.; L.A.; New York), these carefully structured essays help define the culture of our cities, which is otherwise distorted by self-reference and a complicit media. Writing about Reagan-era tell-all books, Didion recasts the Great Communicator as the Fisher King, the keeper of the right-revolutionary grail. On the 1988 campaign trail, she watches a moveable ``set,'' a series of staged events that reveal ``contempt for outsiders'' (i.e., average citizens). In California, Didion documents the ``protective detachment'' that's become part of the frontier legacy. Patty Hearst's survival instinct makes her a typical West Coast girl, as pragmatic as those who live with earthquake jitters. Narrative conflict emerges in Didion's account of the 1988 Screen Guild writers' strike, during which the industry's hierarchy reasserted itself. Likewise, the L.A. mayoral race of 1989 exposed the class and race struggles that everyone in that city would rather ignore. The longest piece here concerns the Central Park Jogger, ``a sacrificial player in the sentimental narrative that is New York public life.'' Like her essay on the ``Cotton Club'' murder, this stunning bit of meta-analysis proves Didion's contention that every crime--to be of larger interest--needs ``a story, a lesson, a high concept.'' When the theoretical clashes with the empirical, she says, narrative takes over, distorting, transforming, ameliorating. For Didion, truth is in the details, arranged so precisely in her seemingly candid prose. A collection to savor by a stylist in top form. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Review “Her intelligence is as honed as ever; her voice has its familiar ring, and her vision is ice-water clear. . . . Didion has captured the mood of America in these days of sullen tension and strife.” —The New York Times   “[Didion’s] reportorial pieces . . . afford the pleasures of literature. . . . [Her] strength is her sensibility, which is perfectly expressed by, and in some cases identical with, her style. Cool, precise, and ironic . . . She is an expert geographer of the landscape of American public culture.” —Hendrik Hertzberg, The New York Times Book Review   “Joan Didion has great instincts for metaphor. She can take an ordinary object . . . and make it as ominous as Hitchcock. . . . She’s writing truths about American culture in the sand at our feet. . . . With Didion leading, you could follow one of her paragraphs into hell.” —The Boston Globe   “In her first collection of essays since The White Album, Didion takes a look at the 1980s with her trademark style—at once languid and piercing—intact. . . . By venturing out of her familiar territory and into the complexities of national affairs, Didion proves that she is indeed one of America’s premier political observers.” —Publishers Weekly   “[After Henry] reminds us that [Didion is] truly one of the premier essayists of our time. . . . A collection to savor by a stylist in top form.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review   “[Takes] aim at the power hungry, at sentimentality, at the manipulation of language . . . Didion’s journalistic essays are often considered her best writing, and this representative sample will be appreciated by readers who like newsworthy reading.” —Library Journal   From the Inside Flap In her latest forays into the American scene, the author of Miami, Democracy, and Salvador covers ground from Washington to Los Angeles and from a TV producer's mansion to the racial battlefields of New York's criminal courts. And along the way, she reveals the mythic narratives that other commentators miss. About the Author Joan Didion is the author of five novels, ten works of nonfiction, and a play. Her books include Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Play It as It Lays, The White Album, The Year of Magical Thinking, and, most recently, South and West: From a Notebook. Born in Sacramento, California, she lives in New York City. Read more