A writer whose fame is fourfold—as novelist, essayist, journalist, and screenwriter—Joan Didion was born in 1934 in California, where her family had lived for five generations. After graduation from the University of California at Berkeley, she spent a few years in New York City, working as a feature editor for the fashion magazine Vogue. She gained wide notice in the 1960s and 1970s with the publication of the essay collections Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968) and The White Album (1979) and the novels River Run (1963), Play It as It Lays (1971), and A Book of Common Prayer (1977). Salvador (1983), her book-length essay based on a visit to war-torn El Salvador, and Miami (1987), a study of Cuban exiles in Florida, also received close attention. With her late husband, John Gregory Dunne, Didion coauthored a number of screenplays, notably for A Star Is Born (1976), True Confessions (1981), and Up Close and Personal (1996). Her latest books are Where I Was From (2003), an assessment of her native California; The Year of Magical Thinking (2005), an examination of Didion’s reactions to Dunne’s sudden death; and Blue Nights (2011), an emotional memoir about the death of their adult daughter after an extended illness.
In this audiobook excerpt from Slouching Towards Bethlehem recorded in 2012, actor Diane Keaton reads one of Didion’s best-loved essays. “The Santa Ana” expresses with vivid intensity the effects of a weather phenomenon peculiar to Southern California.
Download the transcript.
Listen to “The Santa Ana,” and respond to the following questions.
Why do you think Didion felt compelled to write about the Santa Ana? Consider whether she might have had a dual PURPOSE.
Didion alternates between passages of mostly objective and mostly subjective description. What is the DOMINANT IMPRESSION she creates of the Santa Ana wind? What effect does it have on residents of Los Angeles?
Explain what Didion means by a “mechanistic view of human behavior.” What would the opposite of such a view of human behavior be?
OTHER METHODS This essay is full of EXAMPLES of the wind’s EFFECTS on human beings. What effects does Didion focus on? How do these examples help her achieve her purpose?
Write a descriptive essay about something that annoys, frightens, or even crazes you and others. Your subject could be a natural phenomenon, such as the one Didion describes, or something else: bumper-to-bumper traffic at rush hour, long lines at the department of motor vehicles or another government agency, lengthy and complicated voice-mail menus that end up in busy signals. You may use examples from your own experience and observation, from experiences you have read or heard about, or, like Didion, from both sources.
CONNECTIONS Didion tries to explain the Santa Ana phenomenon scientifically as having something to do with an excess of positive ions in the air, but she admits that nobody knows why that excess should translate into unhappiness. Similarly, Michael Chabon, in “XO9” (Chap. 6), tries to understand the psychology behind his obsessive-compulsive behaviors, but concludes that such behaviors can’t be helped. To what extent do you think our moods can be explained by science? Are our emotions simply the by-products of brain chemistry, as some psychologists suggest? Write an essay, using description and narration, about someone you know (or know of) whose moods or behaviors are affected by forces beyond his or her control. Be sure to include enough detail to create a vivid portrait for your readers.