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Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays (FSG Classics)

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Joan Didion’s first work of nonfiction, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, is considered a masterpiece of American literature and the “foundational text” of her oeuvre (New York Times). First published in 1968, the book remains a defining work about the Sixties, about California, about America. More than perhaps any other book, this collection of essays by Didion―one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era―captures her focus on time and place at a unique moment in history. Here, Didion explores people and subjects such as John Wayne, Howard Hughes, growing up in California, the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, and the birth of American counterculture. Didion’s work in Slouching has become a totem for readers “who have lost their sense of place or sense of time or sense of self” (The Rumpus). “In her portraits of people,” writes the New York Times, “Didion is not out to expose but to understand.” Hailed as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time (Time Magazine) and as a classic of New Journalism, Slouching Towards Bethlehem is Didion at her finest. Read more

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux


Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 28, 2008


Edition ‏ : ‎ First Edition


Language ‏ : ‎ English


Print length ‏ : ‎ 256 pages


ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0374531382


ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 86


Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds


Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.45 x 0.65 x 8.25 inches


Best Sellers Rank: #4,521 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #7 in Cultural Anthropology (Books) #8 in Essays (Books) #612 in Literary Fiction (Books)


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Top Amazon Reviews

    • Classic landmark book
Slouching Towards Bethlehem" is a collection of essays by Joan Didion that captures the essence of American culture in the 1960s. Didion's sharp observations and distinctive prose style make this book a landmark of American journalism. Through her essays, she explores a range of topics from the decay of morals in San Francisco to the crafting of self-identity in the golden landscapes of California. Each essay is a meticulously crafted snapshot of a society in flux, observed with the keen, critical eye of a journalist tempered with the narrative flair of a novelist. Didion's work not only provides a historical account of a pivotal era but also offers timeless insights into the complexities of human behavior and the societal forces shaping our lives. Her blend of personal reflection and social commentary has cemented this collection as a classic of modern American literature, resonating with readers who appreciate incisive, introspective narratives. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2025 by JC
    • Turbulent '60s Essays
This is my third by Didion, after her memoirs The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights. It's a collection of 20 turbulent essays -- mostly social commentary but some personal, and all personally felt -- published in various magazines in the mid-1960s. Much of the commentary remains relevant; even many of the details feel current -- for example, these opening lines of the long title essay, set during Haight-Ashbury's 1967 summer of love: "The center was not holding. It was a country of bankruptcy notices and public-auction announcements and commonplace reports of casual killings and misplaced children and abandoned homes and vandals who misspelled even the four-letter words they scrawled. It was a country in which families routinely disappeared, trailing bad checks and repossession papers." I enjoyed most of these essays, where Didion seems like a naturalist in close observation; she infuses more so than reports, and eschews transitions so that I suddenly realized things that hadn't been written. It's been long enough since I read them to recognize a few that still pop up as especially memorable, among them the piece about Haight-Ashbury; one about infidelity and murder outside Los Angeles; another about becoming enamored of John Wayne and forever after dreaming that a man would, as Wayne did in a film, "build her a house 'at the bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow' "; and one about the psychological effects of the Santa Ana and other "foehn" winds that compels me to read more on the phenomenon. I've always been struck that Didion is about the size of a mosquito, and here I was interested to read her take on the matter: "My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does." Yeah, don't let appearances fool you, Didion is brave and passionate and compelling, and it occurs to me that one of the essays, "On Self-respect," details the stitching behind her strength of character. And she's shockingly wise: "I remember one day [...] we both had hangovers [...] and we walked to a Spanish restaurant and drank Bloody Marys and gazpacho until we felt better. I was not then guilt-ridden about spending afternoons that way, because I still had all the afternoons in the world. Are you kidding me? That wasn't written by today's septuagenarian Didion looking back; that's her at age 32. I look forward to reading more, next up probably The White Album. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2013 by emmejay
    • ... always selling somebody out.
Once I read The Year of Magical Thinking, I made it my goal to read all of Didion’s books; this in preparation or rather leading up to her latest endeavor, Let Me Tell You What I Mean, which features twelve never before collected pieces, that “offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary figure.” It is scheduled to be released January 26th. The Year of Magical Thinking is a beautifully written exploration of the self, enveloped in grief. While doing research for her latest, I googled her page and found a Vanity Fair article from 2016, “How Joan Didion the Writer Became Joan Didion the Legend.” In The Atlantic, a post from 2015, “The Elitist Allure of Joan Didion,” and finally, from the Inquirer. Net, a post from yesterday, January 15, “What did Joan Didion smell like in her 20s?” Of course I clicked on it. It led me to the last chapter in Slouching Towards Bethlehem, “Goodbye to All That,” her instinctive yet enthralling ode to New York. “For a lot of the time I was in New York I used a perfume called Fleurs de Rocaille, and then L’Air du Temps, and now the slightest trace of either can short-circuit my connections for the rest of the day.” Slouching Towards Bethlehem was published in 1968 and both are still available; the former launched in 1933, the latter, 1948. The title comes from the Yeats poem, The Second Coming, and “conveys the complexity and the ‘atomization’ of the hippie scene not as the latest fashionable fad, but as a serious advanced stage of society in which things are truly “falling apart.”” Didion is always relevant. I didn’t know Slouching Towards Bethlehem is Didion’s first collection of non-fiction writing; at the time there were questions whether this type of writing was acceptable other than “mere journalism,” but in reality, it is a “rich display of some of the best prose written today in this country.” In Dan Wakefield’s review from the New York Times at the time of its publication, “… in her portraits of people, Ms. Didion is not out to expose but to understand and she shows us actors and millionaires, doomed bridges and naïve acid trippers, left wing idealogues and snobs of the Hawaiian aristocracy in a way that makes them neither villainous nor glamourous but alive and botched and often mournfully beautiful in the midst of their lives’ debris.” Divided into 3 sections, Lifestyles in the Golden Land, Personals, and Seven Places of the Mind; it doesn’t matter what she writes, her personality comes through in such a self-effacing way, as if speaking with a friend. Her prose can meander without losing the reader, then lead you right to a Kleenex. And you don’t know how you got there. “My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does. That is one last thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out.” ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2021 by Carey Calvert
    • Great Book. A modernist prose masterpiece. But come on, Amazon! .
... it bothers me that Amazon does the "bait-and-switch" with the editions. I wanted to buy a new copy as it had been years since I read the paperback. I liked the new cover with Joan in stylish dark glasses. The newer cover suggested a noir tone that I think is appropriate for Didion's writing style. So I placed an order and received an edition that is the original boring '70s-style FSG paperback cover. I won't return it but this the second time I've purchased a book where the image promoted was a different cover from what they sent. (The other time was The Joy of Yiddish. But I DID send that back because the newer paperback is in fact substantially different from the original edition). ... show more
Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2024 by D. D. Fulton

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