Didion, Joan

Where I Was From with: Ephemera

ISBN: 9780679433323
New York, NY, USA: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. First Edition. Hardcover. “My great-great-great-great-great-grandmother Elizabeth Scott was born in 1766, grew up on the Virginia and Carolina frontiers, at age sixteen married and eighteen-year-old veteran of the Revolution and the Cherokee expeditions named Benjamin Hardin IV, moved with him into Tennessee and Kentucky and died on still another frontier, the Oil Trough Bottom on the south bank of the White River in what is now Arkansas but was then Missouri Territory. Elizabeth Scott Hardin was remembered to have hidden in a cave with her children (there were said to have been eleven, only eight of which got recorded) during Indian fighting, and to have been so strong a swimmer that she could ford a river in flood with an infant in her arms. Either in her defense or for reasons of his own, her husband was said to have killed, not counting English soldiers or Cherokees, ten men. This may be true or it may be, in a local oral tradition inclined to stories that turn on decisive gestures, embroidery. I have it on the word of a cousin who researched the matter that the husband, our great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, “appears in the standard printed histories of Arkansas as ‘Old Colonel Ben Hardin, the hero of so many Indian wars.’””--Joan Didion, pg. 3. Joan Didion (1934-2021) was an American writer and journalist. She is considered one of the pioneers of New Journalism, along with Gay Talese (b. 1932), Truman Capote (1924-1984), Norman Mailer (1923-2007), Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005) and Tom Wolfe (1930-2018). Didion’s career spans decades and her work often crosses genre lines and defies expectations. Throughout her long, storied career she produced works such as: the novels Run, River (1963) and A Book of Common Prayer (1977); the non-fiction works Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968) and Blue Nights (2011); and the screen plays/plays The Panic In Needle Park (1971) and True Confessions (1981) among many other works across genres. Offered today is the history/memoir Where I was From (2003). Concerning the history and culture of California, where Didion was born and spent much of her life, Where I Was From combines aspects of historical writing, journalism, and memoir to present a history of California as well as Didion's own experiences in that state. The book attempts to understand the differences between California's factual history and its perceived reputation. According to Didion, "This book represents an exploration into my own confusions about the place and the way in which I grew up . . . misapprehensions and misunderstandings so much a part of who I became that I can still to this day confront them only obliquely." Where I Was From is also in parts a retrospective on Didion's own work, examining how these "confusions" affected her debut novel Run, River. As the inside front flap of the dust jacket states: “In this moving and unexpected book, Joan Didion reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history and ours. Where I Was From...The book is a haunting narrative of how her own family moved west with the frontier from the birth of her great-great-great-great-great-grandmother in Virginia in 1766 to the death of her mother on the edge of the Pacific in 2001; of how the wagon-train stories of hardship and abandonment and endurance created a culture in which survival would seem the sole virtue. In Where I Was From, Didion turns what John Leonard has called “her sonar ear, her radar eye” onto her own work, as well as that of such California writers as Frank Norris and Jack London and Henry George, to examine how the folly and recklessness in the very grain of the California settlement led to the California we know today–a state mortgaged first to the railroad, then to the aerospace industry, and overwhelmingly to the federal government, a dependent colony of those political and corporate owners who fly in for the annual encampment of the Bohemian Club. Here is the one writer we always want to read on California showing us the startling contradictions in its–and in America’s–core values.” A great Didion collectible! From the collection of Laurence Goldstein (1943-2023), poet, editor, and professor in the University of Michigan Department of English Language and Literature. We have found and retained between front cover and first paste-down page, a small newspaper clipping of a notice of Didion’s memorial service held on September 21, 2022. Hardcover in unclipped dust-jacket. First edition as stated at copyright page, presumed first printing though not explicated thereon. Book in very fine condition with only minor wear to fine edges. Dust jacket in very fine condition with minor wear to fine edges, slight smudging to front and back covers, and very minor scratching/staining to same. Very Fine / Very Fine. [Item #8691]

Price: $75.00