The second half of Slouching Towards Bethlehem continues
Joan Didion’s theme of California in the 1960s and overlapping a wide range of topics.
In the last two sections, “Personals” and “Seven Places of the Mind”, Didion’s
tone becomes more personal and includes essays relative to her own life. She
writes about her habit of keeping notebooks, self-respect, Hollywood, morality,
and ending with an essay about leaving New York and returning to California. Aside
from the scattered plotlines, Didion’s unique perspective and elements of
narrative and realism display her personal search for herself.
Beginning the second
section with “On Keeping a Notebook”, Didion writes about her habit of keeping
notebooks in order to remember certain situations. But the reality is, she cannot
always remember what the notes mean. Didion explains that keeping a notebook is
not keeping a record or a diary of events in her life, but to remember the way that
she feels. Through this interpretation of her own habit, she shows how a notebook
is essentially personal and unique to yourself.
The final essay in the
book, “Goodbye to All That”, is about her reasons for leaving New York. Beginning,
“It is easy to see the beginning of things, and harder to see the ends”, Didion
describes her life falling apart in front of her. She had first moved to New
York as a young woman looking for adventure. Through time and maturity, she
becomes depressed from living so far from everyone she knows and loves. Finally,
she gives in to homesickness and returns to California to make a new life with
her husband.
Her essays resemble a
journal; detailed, personal, thoughtful, with a deeper meaning to be found by
Didion herself. Although many of these essays were publicly published, it is
likely that many of her works were written for herself more than anyone else. Through
her personal descriptions of California and writing, Didion reveals this search
for herself during a time of confusion.
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