Joan Didion

This is a surprising portrait of the pastel city, a masterly study of Cuban immigration and exile, and a sly account of vile moments in the Cold War. Miami may be the sunniest place in America but this is Didion's darkest book, in which she explores American efforts to overthrow the Castro regime, Miami's civic corruption and racist treatment of its large black community.

El Salvador, 1982, is at the height of a ghastly civil war. Joan Didion travels from battlefields to body dumps, interviews a puppet president, considers the distinctly Salvadorean meaning of the verb 'to disappear' and trains a merciless eye not only on the terror there but also on the depredations and evasions of US foreign policy. Salvador is a restless and unflinching masterclass in the art of reportage by one of the great literary stylists of the twentieth century.

Genudgivelse i paperback. Blå timer er en fritstående fortsættelse af Et år med magisk tænkning og om muligt en endnu stærkere bog. Den handler især om Joan Didions datters død. Om det frygteligt forkerte i at skulle begrave sin voksne datter kort tid efter hendes bryllup. Om at stå magtesløs tilbage. Og mærke alderdommen snige sig ind på en og forstærke denne magtesløshed, hvordan den rent fysisk nærmest tager over. Samtidig - fordi Joan Didion så modigt og fintfølende evner at registrere og reflektere over, det, der sker i dette tilværelsens og sjælelivets skumringsland - bliver den tragiske beretning til en intens, livsklog og livsbekræftende bog. Med udgangspunkt i de lykkelige minder netop fra datterens bryllyp og fra de glimt af barndommen, der dukker op i forberedelserne af dette, opruller Joan Didion deres liv sammen. Mor og datter. Og med et helt særligt klarsyn, skærpet af sorgen, beskriver hun både de lykkeligste stunder og de smertelige øjeblikke og oplevelser af afstand, utilstrækkelighed og fravær. Joan Didion formår som få at stille skarpt på og beskrive tilværelsens mange facetter. Her skriver hun dybt bevægende og tankevækkende om at se hele sit liv - ikke mindst kærligheden til sit barn og sin egen rolle som forældre.

Joan Didion, en av den amerikanska litterära scenens stora namn, är tillbaka på svenska. Atlas inleder med att återutge hennes klassiska roman Lagt kort i pocket. Maria Wyeth, trettionånting med en kort men lysande karriär bakom sig i Hollywood, räknas inte längre till de lovande och lever sitt liv likgiltig för omvärlden. På flykt från sin man, sin älskare, sina vänner, det förflutna och framtiden spenderar hon dagarna i sin cab på väg bort bort bort. Skådespelerska, dotter, fru, mor och kvinna: hon har spelat alla roller och bara funnit tomhet och leda. Lagt kort utspelas på en plats bortom gott och ont, fysiskt i Los Angeles, Las Vegas och Mojaveöknens öde landskap. Lagt kort är tre decennier efter att den skrevs fortfarande en stor läsupplevelse. Joan Didion föddes i Sacramento, Kalifornien, och bor i New York. Hon har skrivit fem romaner, sju reportageböcker och en handfull filmmanus. Hon skriver regelbundet i The New York Review of Books och The New Yorker. Joan DIDION blev – tillsammans med bl.a. Hunter S. Thompson och Tom Wolfe -– en av förgrundsfigurerna inom New journalism och räknas nu som en av 1900-talets stora amerikanska författare. Hennes näst senaste bok, Kalifornien - min histora (Where I was from), utkommer på svenska 2006 och hennes senaste bok, The year of magical thinking, hösten 2006. "She´s a genius. And I completely ripped her off when I wrote Less than zero, and I´m proud of it" Brett Easton Ellis Om Lagt kort: "There hasn´t been another American writer of Joan DIDION´s quality since Nathanel West . . . A terrifying book." - The New York Times "An articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time, a memorable voice." - Joyce Carol Oates "She has written an extraordinary history... DIDION´s prose...is flawless: cool but rich, lyrical and tough." - The Independent "Simple, restrained, intelligent, well-structured, witty, irresistibly relentless, forthright in diction, and untainted by the sensational, Play It As It Lays is a book of outstanding literary quality." - Library Journal "[A] scathing novel, distilling venom in tiny drops, revealing devastation in a sneer and fear in a handful of atomic dust." - Book World

Miami is not just a portrait of a city, but a masterly study of immigration and exile, passion, hypocrisy, and political violence, from the bestselling, award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Let Me Tell You What I Mean. It is where Fidel Castro raised money to overthrow Batista and where two generations of Castro's enemies have raised armies to overthrow him, so far without success. It is where the bitter opera of Cuban exile intersects with the cynicism of U. S. foreign policy. It is a city whose skyrocketing murder rate is fueled by the cocaine trade, racial discontent, and an undeclared war on the island ninety miles to the south. As Didion follows Miami's drift into a Third World capital, she also locates its position in the secret history of the Cold War, from the Bay of Pigs to the Reagan doctrine and from the Kennedy assassination to the Watergate break-in.

Inez Victor knows that the major casualty of the political life is memory. But the people around Inez have made careers out of losing track. Her senator husband wants to forget the failure of his last bid for the presidency. Her husband's handler would like the press to forget that Inez's father is a murderer. And, in 1975, the year in which much of this bitterly funny novel is set, America is doing its best to lose track of its one-time client, the lethally hemorrhaging republic of South Vietnam. As conceived by Joan Didion, these personages and events constitute the terminal fallout of democracy, a fallout that also includes fact-finding junkets, senatorial groupies, the international arms market, and the Orwellian newspeak of the political class. Moving deftly from Honolulu to Jakarta, between romance, farce, and tragedy, Democracy is a tour de force from a writer who can dissect an entire society with a single phrase.

In 1982, Didion traveled to El Salvador at the height of the ghastly civil war. From battlefields to body dumps, she trained a merciless eye not only on the terror but also on the depredations and evasions of our own country's foreign policy.

The iconic writer's electrifying first novel is a story of marriage, murder and betrayal that only she could tell with such nuance, sympathy, and suspense--from the bestselling, award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Let Me Tell You What I Mean. Everett McClellan and his wife, Lily, are the great-grandchildren of pioneers, and what happens to them is a tragic epilogue to the pioneer experience--a haunting portrait of a marriage whose wrong turns and betrayals are at once absolutely idiosyncratic and a razor-sharp commentary on the history of California.

The ultimate Didion edition concludes with the brilliant and haunting works from her incomparable late phase. Library of America now completes its definitive, three-volume edition of one of the most electric writers of our time with the final seven books: Political Fictions (2001) offers a behind-the-scenes look at the American political landscape of the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, its reflections on sound bites, photo ops, and an increasingly dysfunctional system still bracingly relevant. Fixed Ideas (2003), restored to print in this collection, traces the efforts of the Bush administration to "stake new ground in old domestic wars" in the wake of 9/11. Where I Was From (2003) explores the sunny myths and darker realities of Didion's native California, her personal recollections interwoven with sketches of water wars, sexual predators, mass incarceration, and corporate corruption. The Year of Magical Thinking (2005), which brought Didion the National Book Award and legions of new readers, registers the shock of the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, amid her daughter Quintana's ultimately terminal illness. Looking back on her marriage of four decades, she faces the abyss of a grief that "turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it." The Year of Magical Thinking: The Play (2007) is Didion's lauded dramatic adaptation of the memoir. Blue Nights (2011) is Didion's raw and haunting search for consolation amid despair. South and West (2017) revisits Didion's notebooks from a happier time, recalling a roadtrip with her husband through the American South, and 1970s California. Here are the achingly beautiful memoirs and masterful collections of reportage and observation with which Joan Didion crowned the final decades of her extraordinary career.

A ruthless and unflinching examination of American life in the late 1960s, from the author of The Year of Magical Thinking. One thing in my defence, not that it matters: I know what ‘nothing’ means, and keep on playing Somewhere out beyond Hollywood, hollowed-out actress Maria Wyeth’s life plays out in a numbing routine of perpetual freeway driving. In her early thirties, divorced from her husband, dislocated from friends, anesthetized to pain and pleasure, Wheth is a woman who has run out of both desires and motives – the epitome of a generation made ill by too much freedom. More than five decades after its original publication, Play it as it Lays remains a profoundly disturbing novel that ruthlessly dissects American life in the late 1960s, from the author of The White Album and The Year of Magical Thinking.

An exploration of the visual corollary to Didion’s life and work and the feeling that each generates in her admirers, detractors and critics—including artists from Helen Lundeberg to Diane Arbus, Betye Saar to Maren Hassinger, Vija Celmins and Andy Warhol In Joan Didion: What She Means, the writer and curator Hilton Als creates a mosaic that explores Didion's life and work and the feeling each generates in her admirers, detractors and critics. Arranged chronologically, the book highlights Didion's fascination with the two coasts that made her. As a Westerner transplanted to New York, Didion was able to look at her native land, its mores and fixed rules of behavior, with the loving and critical eyes of a daughter who got out and went back. (Didion and her late husband moved from New York to Los Angeles in 1964, where they worked as highly successful screenwriters, producing scripts for 1971's The Panic in Needle Park and 1976's A Star Is Born, among other works, before returning to New York 20 years later.) And from her New York perch, Didion was able to observe the political scene more closely, writing trenchant pieces about Clinton, El Salvador and most searingly the Central Park Five. The book includes more than 50 artists ranging from Brice Marden and Ed Ruscha to Betye Saar, Vija Clemins and many others, with works in all mediums including painting, ephemera, photography, sculpture, video and film. Also included are three previously uncollected texts by Didion: “In Praise of Unhung Wreaths and Love” (1969); a much-excerpted 1975 commencement address at UC Riverside; and “The Year of Hoping for Stage Magic” (2007).

Unas apasionantes memorias sobre la California natal de Joan Didion, contadas con una inconfundible mirada personal y emotiva. «Irresistible ...]. Un canto al lugar d nde su familia ha vivido durante generaciones, pero uno lleno de preguntas y dudas . --The New York Times Joan Didion dedica estas memorias a su California natal, el estado al que, siglos atr s, llegaron sus antepasados y al que ella at gran parte de su vida y de su obra. «Este libro representa una exploraci n de mis propias confusiones acerca del lugar y la forma en que crec ...] unos malentendidos y malinterpretaciones que forman parte de quien soy en tanta medida que todav a hoy solo les hago frente de refil n , dec a Didion sobre un libro tan intelectualmente provocador como ntimo. Mezclando historia, cr nica, memoria y cr tica literaria, la autora explora los romances de California con la tierra y con el agua, sus deudas no reconocidas con los ferrocarriles, la industria aeroespacial y con el Gobierno central, as como el contraste entre su culto al individualismo y su fetiche por las c rceles. Ya sea escribiendo sobre sus antepasados, sobre depredadores sexuales, pol ticos corruptos o escritores (sin excluirse a s misma), Didion vuelve a demostrar aqu su incomparable capacidad de observaci n. De donde soy nos regala una mirada nica al dibujar un mapa hist rico y personal de la Costa Oeste de Estados Unidos, pero tambi n al reflexionar sobre la escritura mientras revisa, a trav s del arte, la pol tica, la econom a y las vivencias de sus antepasados, el ideal de la «tierra prometida a lo largo de dos siglos. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION From the bestselling, award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking In this "arresting amalgam of memoir and historical timeline" (The Baltimore Sun), Didion--a native Californian--reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history, and ours. Didion applies her scalpel-like intelligence to California's ethic of ruthless self-sufficiency in order to examine that ethic's often tenuous relationship to reality. Combining history and reportage, memoir, and literary criticism, Where I Was From explores California's romances with land and water; its unacknowledged debts to railroads, aerospace, and big government; the disjunction between its code of individualism and its fetish for prisons. Whether she is writing about her pioneer ancestors or privileged sexual predators, robber barons or writers (not excluding herself), Didion is an unparalleled observer, and this book is at once intellectually provocative and deeply personal.