Tag Archives: Joan Didion

“The wind shows us how close to the edge we are.”

Posted on August 13, 2015 by Kate Stover

The power of this final sharp sentence in the essay “The Santa Ana” by Joan Didion comes, in part, from the preceding sentence’s beautiful set-up: “Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, and just as the reliably … Continue reading →

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“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”

Posted on November 17, 2014 by Tony Herman

This is the first sentence from The White Album by Joan Didion, a classic from 1979.  Known for her precise, unsentimental tone, she “wrote with a cool head in accordance with the principle that the lower the temperature of her … Continue reading →

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