Joan Didion. (2021). Let Me Tell You What I Mean: An Essay Collection. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Joan Didion. 2021. Let Me Tell You What I Mean: An Essay Collection. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Joan Didion, Let Me Tell You What I Mean: An Essay Collection. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2021.

Joan Didion. Let Me Tell You What I Mean: An Essay Collection. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2021.

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   • bioText: JOAN DIDION was born in Sacramento in 1934 and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1956. After graduation, Didion moved to New York and began working for Vogue, which led to her career as a journalist and writer. Didion published her first novel, Run River, in 1963. Didion’s other novels include A Book of Common Prayer (1977), Democracy (1984), and The Last Thing He Wanted (1996).
      
     Didion’s first volume of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, was published in 1968, and her second, The White Album, was published in 1979. Her nonfiction works include Salvador (1983), Miami (1987), After Henry (1992), Political Fictions (2001), Where I Was From (2003), We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live (2006), Blue Nights (2011), South and West (2017) and Let Me Tell You What I Mean (2021). Her memoir The Year of Magical Thinking won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2005.
      
     In 2005, Didion was awarded the American Academy of Arts & Letters Gold Medal in Criticism and Belles Letters. In 2007, she was awarded the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. A portion of National Book Foundation citation read: "An incisive observer of American politics and culture for more than forty-five years, Didion’s distinctive blend of spare, elegant prose and fierce intelligence has earned her books a place in the canon of American literature as well as the admiration of generations of writers and journalists.” In 2013, she was awarded a National Medal of Arts and Humanities by President Barack Obama, and the PEN Center USA’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
     Didion said of her writing: "I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.” She died in December 2021.
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Let Me Tell You What I Mean

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A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From one of our most iconic and influential writers, the award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking: a timeless collection of mostly early pieces that reveal what would become Joan Didion's subjects, including the press, politics, California robber barons, women, and her own self-doubt.

With a forward by Hilton Als, these twelve pieces from 1968 to 2000, never before gathered together, offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary figure. They showcase Joan Didion's incisive reporting, her empathetic gaze, and her role as "an articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time" (The New York Times Book Review).
Here, Didion touches on topics ranging from newspapers ("the problem is not so much whether one trusts the news as to whether one finds it"), to the fantasy of San Simeon, to not getting into Stanford. In "Why I Write," Didion ponders the act of writing: "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means." From her admiration for Hemingway's sentences to her acknowledgment that Martha Stewart's story is one "that has historically encouraged women in this country, even as it has threatened men," these essays are acutely and brilliantly observed. Each piece is classic Didion: incisive, bemused, and stunningly prescient.

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     November 1, 2020
     A dozen pieces of nonfiction from the acclaimed novelist, memoirist, and screenwriter. In an appreciative introduction, New Yorker theater critic Hilton Als praises Didion as "a carver of words in the granite of the specific." Stylistic precision ("Grammar is a piano I play by ear," she writes) and the "energy and shimmer" of her prose are fully evident in this volume of previously uncollected pieces, written from 1968 to 2000. Although Didion portrays herself as a diffident, unconfident writer as a college student, she learned "a kind of ease with words" when working at Vogue, where she was assigned to write punchy, concise copy. The experience, she recalls, was "not unlike training with the Rockettes." Several pieces were originally published in magazines, and two were introductions: one, to a volume of photography by Robert Mapplethorpe; another, to a memoir by director--and Didion's friend--Tony Richardson. All reveal the author's shrewd, acerbic critical eye. In "Getting Serenity," she reports on a meeting of Gamblers Anonymous, where, she notes sardonically, one woman "adapted her mode of public address from analgesic commercials." William Randolph Hearst's "phantasmagoric barony," San Simeon, "seemed to confirm the boundless promise of the place we lived," but, she decided, was best admired from afar, like a fairy-tale castle, "floating fantastically." Didion's rejection from Stanford elicited an essay about college as consumption, and her skewering of consumption and artifice recur as themes--for example, in her observation of the ways women stage themselves for portrait photographs. Several particularly revealing essays focus on writing: "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking," she famously admitted, a statement often misattributed to others. Writing, for her, is "the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. It's an aggressive, even a hostile act." As these pieces show, it's also an accomplished act of seduction. A slender, highly satisfying collection.

     COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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     November 9, 2020
     This wide-ranging essay collection from Didion (South and West: From a Notebook) showcases her strengths as a short form writer. Organized chronologically from 1968 to 2000, the pieces trace Didion’s development as an essayist and offer glimpses of late-20th-century social history. In 1968’s “Alicia and the Underground Press,” Didion writes of “tabloid-sized papers that respect the special interests of the young and the disaffiliated,” praising their ability to speak directly to their readers; “The Long-Distance Runner,” from 1993, is an ode to filmmaker Tony Richardson: “I never knew anyone who so loved to make things,” she writes; and “Everywoman.com,” from 2000, examines the “cultural meaning of Martha Stewart’s success” and the way she “branded herself not as Superwoman but as Everywoman.” As always, the writing is captivating—in the early “Getting Serenity,” she writes about attending a Gamblers Anonymous meeting (“I got out fast then, before anyone could say ‘serenity’ again, for it is a word I associate with death”) and finds just the right details to nail down the feeling of a bygone era—for example, the mix of “plastic hydrangeas” and cigarette smoke at the GA meeting. Didion fans new and old will be delighted.

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     November 1, 2020
     In a 1968 essay contrasting mainstream media with the underground press, Didion writes, "I admire objectivity very much indeed, but I fail to see how it can be achieved if the reader does not understand the writer's particular bias." That's Didion in an essence, elegantly dismantling assumptions and stating discomfiting truths. In "Why I Write," another of the dozen arresting, mind-tuning, previously uncollected essays in this exhilarating and instructive gathering spanning several decades, she states that writing is "an aggressive, even a hostile act." It is also a voyage of discovery for Didion, conducted via meticulous observation and assiduous questioning of what she thinks and how her investigations make her feel. We see this at work in her responses to a reunion of the WWII 101st Airborne Division during the Vietnam War and a photo shoot with Nancy Reagan, and in profiles of Robert Mapplethorpe and Martha Stewart. Didion is both porous and steely, self-deprecating and in command. With a perceptive foreword by Hilton Als, who discerns the "uncanny" in Didion's exacting work, this an illuminating and inspiring addition to the influential Didion canon.

     COPYRIGHT(2020) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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     January 1, 2021
     

     Didion's latest book of essays is engrossing, memorable, and delightful. The pieces are not new, but newly collected, dating between 1968 and 2000, though they are remarkably consistent and relevant throughout. Subjects vary widely, from the posthumous publication of Ernest Hemingway's works and the complicated business personality of Martha Stewart, to visiting the Hearst Castle in San Simeon and attending photo shoots for Vogue. All are written with sincerity and with Didion's powerful sense of astute observation, as she describes her influences, worries, and occasionally fears. Readers can judge for themselves their own standout essay from the collection, but surely "Why I Write" will be a strong contender. Several pieces in this volume attend to the craft and purpose of writing, and in this one especially Didion candidly shows her devotion to writing and explains her own place and purpose as a writer. VERDICT This volume could be read in one sitting or one vignette at a time, as Didion's perceptive voice connects the essays beautifully, but each one can stand equally well on its own terms. For both fans of Didion and those new to her work entirely, this collection is an essential investment.--Sarah Schroeder, Univ. of Washington Bothell

     Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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With a forward by Hilton Als, these twelve pieces from 1968 to 2000, never before gathered together, offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary figure. They showcase Joan Didion's incisive reporting, her empathetic gaze, and her role as "an articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time" (The New York Times Book Review).
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