Getting the Story Joan Didion's Aesthetic Transformation

Abstract

Many contemporary readings of Joan Didion, not to mention her public profile, present her early journalism as her crowning achievement. Works such as Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album are venerated as definitive Didion texts. However, Didion's work, in particular her journalism and memoir, underwent a radical change following these texts. This change can be witnessed in the transformation of Didion's style and politics between Slouching Towards Bethlehem and her later work, which often appeared in the New York Review of Books under the editorial guidance of the late Robert B. Silvers. This article tracks this change, identifying Didion's move away from surety and an objective voice towards ambivalence, subjectivity and nuance in search of a specific ideal of truth. I argue that the development of Didion's style, both aesthetic and poetic, reflects a political evolution and a reconstitution of what it might mean to approach truth on a personal and journalistic level, and this has a particular resonance given present conversations around truth in journalism and politics.