South and West: From A Notebook Audiobook (Free)

From one of the very most important chroniclers of our time, come two extended excerpts from her never-before-seen notebooks-writings that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary writer.

Joan Didion offers always kept notebooks: of overheard dialogue, observations, interviews, drafts of essays and articles

Here is one such draft that traces a street trip she took with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, in June 1970, through Louisiana, Mississippi, and on the subject of South and Western: From A Notebook Alabama. She interviews prominent regional figures, represents motels, diners, a deserted reptile farm, a check out with Walker Percy, a women’ brunch in the Mississippi Broadcasters’ Convention. She writes about the stifling heat, the nearly viscous pace of lifestyle, the sulfurous light, and the preoccupation with race, class, and traditions she discovers in the tiny towns they pass through.

And from a different notebook: the ‘California Records’ that began while an task from Rolling Stone on the Patty Hearst trial of 1976. Though Didion hardly ever had written the piece, viewing the trial and being in San Francisco activated thoughts about the city, its public hierarchy, the Hearsts, and her own upbringing in Sacramento. Here, too, may be the starting of her thinking about the Western, its landscape, the western females who were heroic on her behalf, and her own lineage.