Slouching Towards Bethlehem is a 1968 collection of essay

Essay

An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...

s by Joan Didion

Joan Didion

Joan Didion is an American author best known for her novels and her literary journalism. Her novels and essays explore the disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos, where the overriding theme is individual and social fragmentation...

 and mainly describes her experiences in California during the 1960s. It takes its title from the poem "The Second Coming

The Second Coming (poem)

"The Second Coming" is a poem composed by Irish poet William Butler Yeats in 1919 and first printed in The Dial and afterwards included in his 1921 collection of verses titled Michael Robartes and the Dancer. The poem uses Christian imagery regarding the Apocalypse and second coming as allegory to...

," by W. B. Yeats. The contents of this book are reprinted in Didion's We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction (2006)

We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live

We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction is a 2006 collection of nonfiction by Joan Didion. It includes the full content of her first seven volumes of nonfiction: Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, Salvador, Miami, After Henry, Political Fictions, and Where I Was...

.

Title essay

The title essay describes Didion's impressions of the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco during the neighborhood's heyday as a countercultural center. In contrast to the more utopian image of the milieu promoted by counterculture sympathizers then and now, Didion offered a rather grim portrayal of the goings-on, including an encounter with a pre-school age child who was given LSD by her parents.

In her preface to the book Didion writes, "I went to San Francisco because I had not been able to work in some months, had been paralyzed by the conviction that writing was an irrelevant act, that the world as I had understood it no longer existed. If I was to work again at all, it would be necessary for me to come to terms with disorder."

I. Lifestyles in the Golden Land

• "Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream"
  Appeared first in 1966 in The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
  
  under the title "How Can I Tell Them There's Nothing Left".
• "John Wayne: A Love Song"
  Appeared first in 1965 in The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
  
  .
• "Where the Kissing Never Stops"
  Appeared first in 1966 in The New York Times Magazine
  The New York Times Magazine
  The New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors...
  
  under the title "Just Folks at a School for Non-Violence."
• "Comrade Laski
  Michael Laski
  Michael Laski was the founder of the Communist Party USA , a splinter group of the Communist Party USA. Laski had taken the side of China during the famous Sino-Soviet split of the early 1960s, calling for a return to ruralism and direct agitation of capitalist countries and organizations...
  
  , C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.)"
  Appeared first in 1967 in The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
  
  .
• "7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38"
  Appeared first in 1967 in The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
  
  under the title "The Howard Hughes Underground".
• "California Dreaming"
  Appeared first in 1967 in The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
  
  .
• "Marrying Absurd"
  Appeared first in 1967 in The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
  
  .
• "Slouching Towards Bethlehem"
  Appeared first in 1967 in The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
  
  .

II. Personals

• "On Keeping a Notebook"
  Appeared first in 1966 in Holiday
  Holiday (magazine)
  Holiday was an American travel magazine published from 1946 to 1977. Originally published by the Curtis Publishing Company, Holidays circulation grew to over one million subscribers at its height....
  
  .
• "On Self-Respect"
  Appeared first in 1961 in Vogue
  Vogue (magazine)
  Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
  
  .
• "I Can't Get That Monster out of My Mind"
  Appeared first in 1964 in American Scholar
  The American Scholar (magazine)
  The American Scholar is the literary quarterly of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, founded in 1932. The magazine has won fourteen National Magazine Awards from the American Society of Magazine Editors from 1999 to present, including awards for General Excellence...
  
  .
• "On Morality"
  Appeared first in 1965 in American Scholar
  The American Scholar (magazine)
  The American Scholar is the literary quarterly of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, founded in 1932. The magazine has won fourteen National Magazine Awards from the American Society of Magazine Editors from 1999 to present, including awards for General Excellence...
  
  under the title "The Insidious Ethic of Conscience."
• "On Going Home"
  Appeared first in 1967 in The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
  
  .

III. Seven Places of the Mind

• "Notes from a Native Daughter"
  Appeared first in 1965 in Holiday
  Holiday (magazine)
  Holiday was an American travel magazine published from 1946 to 1977. Originally published by the Curtis Publishing Company, Holidays circulation grew to over one million subscribers at its height....
  
  .
• "Letter from Paradise, 21° 19' N., 157° 52' W"
  Appeared first in 1966 in The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
  
  under the title "Hawaii: Taps Over Pearl Harbor."
• "Rock of Ages"
  Appeared first in 1967 in The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
  
  .
• "The Seacoast of Despair"
  Appeared first in 1967 in The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
  
  .
• "Guaymas, Sonora"
  Appeared first in 1965 in Vogue
  Vogue (magazine)
  Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
  
  .
• "Los Angeles Notebook"
  A section entitled "The Santa Ana" appeared first in 1965 in The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
  
  .
• "Goodbye to All That"
  Appeared first in 1967 in The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post
  The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
  
  under the title "Farewell to the Enchanted City".

Reception

In The New York Times Book Review

The New York Times Book Review

The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...

, the novelist and screenwriter Dan Wakefield

Dan Wakefield

Dan Wakefield is an American novelist, journalist and screenwriter. His best-selling novels, Going All the Way and Starting Over were made into feature films...

wrote, "Didion's first collection of nonfiction writing, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, brings together some of the finest magazine pieces published by anyone in this country in recent years. Now that Truman Capote has pronounced that such work may achieve the stature of 'art,' perhaps it is possible for this collection to be recognized as it should be: not as a better or worse example of what some people call 'mere journalism,' but as a rich display of some of the best prose written today in this country."

External links

• Dan Wakefield in The New York Times Book Review on Slouching Towards Bethlehem