- Paperback: 240 pages
- Publisher: Vintage Books USA; Reprint edition (Sep 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0679752862
- ISBN-13: 978-0679752868
- Product Dimensions: 20.5 x 13.3 x 1.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 5,363,497 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Where I Was From
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Product Description
Review
‘She is a voice like no other in contemporary journalism.’ New York Times
‘Everything Didion writes has a land’s end edginess to it- a hyperattentiveeye on the dramas of the human condition. She writes as someone who has come through great shudders of the earth with a fundamental understanding that everything is subject to instantaneous and complete revision.’ Village Voice
‘She is the best chronicler California has.’ Vogue
‘Valediction and elegy alike, WHERE I WAS FROM is a storm-tossed book… Some writers see Californians as brilliant dreamers; others see failures, seeking a second start. Didion steps over both arguments and portrays the settlers of the state as shrewd entrepreneurs who would stop at nothing to turn dirt into dollars.’ Thomas Curwen, LA Times
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.Review
'Her tough, beautiful, surgically precise prose is like nothing else I've ever read.' Donna Tartt 'She is a voice like no other in contemporary journalism.' New York Times 'Everything Didion writes has a land's end edginess to it- a hyperattentiveeye on the dramas of the human condition. She writes as someone who has come through great shudders of the earth with a fundamental understanding that everything is subject to instantaneous and complete revision.' Village Voice 'She is the best chronicler California has.' Vogue 'Valediction and elegy alike, WHERE I WAS FROM is a storm-tossed book! Some writers see Californians as brilliant dreamers; others see failures, seeking a second start. Didion steps over both arguments and portrays the settlers of the state as shrewd entrepreneurs who would stop at nothing to turn dirt into dollars.' Thomas Curwen, LA Times She is one of our true stylists. Her sentences have the wicked precision of a Wodehouse or a Waugh, though she uses them for a different purpose: a cold keening for the times we live in.' Richard Eder 'A slant of vision that is arresting and unique! Didion might be an observer from another planet -- one so edgy and alert that she ends up knowing more about our own world than we know ourselves.' Anne Tyler 'Joan Didion has always held a solitary status as a modern American essayist, her prose defining erudition and cool elegance! Her style always belonged more to noir than hip: It suggested a singular integrity, a private struggle with ominous depths. She showed a generation of young American journalists how to make reporting moodily stylish, a personal expression.' New York Observer 'Didion's whole career has been a disenchantment, from which her pages fall like brilliant autumn leaves and arrange themselves as sermons in the stones.' New York Times Book Review 'There's no accident that she writes movies and lives with film, because her work, like Hemingway's is montage! She has the same sense of the power of the sentence and the power of the next sentence.' Norman Mailer
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 43 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
California is changing, and it upsets old folks.
Didion is clearly upset, like a variety of folks ranging in age from those of tender young years
to fossilized old fogies. They are hurt, bewildered, confused and made mad by change.
Arizons is flooded with refugees from California who want to go back to "the good old days"
-- they have utterly restored Prescott into a brand new Victorian town of the 1890s, and
they are now restoring the glory of the 1920s and 1930s in central Phoenix.
Like many of the elderly in mind, spirit and outlook, Didion regrets what is past. She doesn't
seem to understand that even if the future is different, it may be better. It's a story of her
family intertwined with modern California; both her ancestors and California are examples of
people constantly on the move in the search for something better -- even if they don't know
what that "something" might be, and even if they lose their heritage by moving.
Granted, Didion is the "intellectual" of the family. This book gave me the distinct impression
she'd be much happier, fulfilled and content if her ancestors had never left Alsace. Somehow
I doubt if she speaks German -- she wouldn't go back to Alsace unless she spoke German,
just to show the Frenchies that her past is more important than their conquests. So she did
the next best thing, and now lives in New York.
As a genuine New Yorker, which is not "her" city so she doesn't mind how it changes, she
offers a long recital of California happenings as seen by an original family and finds the state
much lacking since her departure. Any one of us, and I'm no exception, can return to our
"hometown" and find similar faults.
It's a nice book for tired old people waiting out their empty years in sterile nursing homes
where they lament the passing of the past. Even homebound grouches may find it interesting,
especially if they live in California.
There are flashes of insight, such as her descriptions of the Alameda Corridor, and the
Lakewood school sex scandal; but, she fails to draw any meaning from these events. Her
descriptions of the aircraft industry are interesting -- and exactly the same as I heard in the
1960s when I worked in the aircraft industry. Ho hum, it's a pity she never helped put
airplanes together.
Perhaps it's because she doesn't understand herself, or her ancestors. She is the epitome of
the quintessential Californian, the daughter of a long line of "California" ancestors even when
they lived on the Virginia/Carolina frontier in 1766. As a Canadian, I'd describe her as
everything we expect Californians to represent; as a Californian, she is blind to personal
introspection as well as understanding herself and her state.
If you like moaning about the past, you'll love this book. Didion finds a lot to regret, and not
much of the modern to understand, an approach which many find attractive. If you can read
through her words, uncover the meanings hidden in her chronicle of complaint, you'll discover
the basics which made California a great state.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
22 reviews
86 of 100 people found the following review helpful
America's greatest writer pops out her best book yet
25 Sep 2003
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is possibly as close as the famously oblique Joan Didion will ever come to writing a memoir. It takes a master stylist to weave together such disparate threads as one family's heritage, manifest destiny, Didion's eighth-grade commencement speech, her first novel (an atavistically brave move), the works of other writers (Jack London, Victor Davis Hansen), notes on pop painter Thomas Kinkade and Lakewood's infamous "Spur Posse," and more.
I can't think of any writer could do a better job than Didion at examining the weird admixture of passion and ambivalence that a native Californian may have for her state. I share it, and I admire this book especially because I know the terrain she dissects and lays bare. Her spare prose is a joy to read.
35 of 40 people found the following review helpful
Where we came from
28 July 2005
Format:Paperback
WHERE I WAS FROM is Joan Didion's meditation on her native state of California. Though much of the huge population of the state was not born there, Didion, like this reviewer, is the descendant of 19th century pioneers who established ranches that are long gone. Didion went looking for what makes California itself, what it imparts to its natives. Her findings, rendered in that elegant stingray voice like ice water splashed on the face on a scorching day in the Central Valley, may surprise a lot of readers.
No one could possibly achieve a personal portrait of California and include every iconic landmark or quirk. The film industry does not figure into this, LA's waterworks is not here. This is not Steinbeck's California, or Kerouac's or Dashiell Hammett's. It is, however, the landscape of Frank Norris's THE OCTOPUS, Jack London's VALLEY OF THE MOON, Faulkner's short story, "Golden Land," and Henry George's prescient essay, "What the Railroad Will Bring Us," to which Didion brings a close reading. The settling of California was made possible by the government and the sense of entitlement still resounds, as does the seemingly contradictory rugged pioneer individualism that claims the right to do as one pleases without strings attached. There is a pioneer code, "kill the rattlesnake," meaning to act in the interest of the greater good so others are not hurt, but there is also the overwhelming theme of development, the meaning of which Didion finds in the act of selling the family cemetery, along with the ranch. The lesson about development is also played out through the history of the Lakewood community tangent to LA, one that did not exist until the 1950s when it was created on former ranch land and became a whole town with a resident employer, the defense contractor McDonell Douglas, with whose fortunes, given and taken away by the federal government, it rose and emptied, spewing forth a notoriously violent, purposeless youth culture.
This book resonates deeply with me--as a child, I watched my animal-loving mother weep as she killed the rattlesnake, and the ranch and the winery were gone by the time I was born--but I have to think that this beautifully crafted book should be of value to all Americans because, as John Donne said, none of us is an island and what happens to one part can bear significance for the rest.
No one could possibly achieve a personal portrait of California and include every iconic landmark or quirk. The film industry does not figure into this, LA's waterworks is not here. This is not Steinbeck's California, or Kerouac's or Dashiell Hammett's. It is, however, the landscape of Frank Norris's THE OCTOPUS, Jack London's VALLEY OF THE MOON, Faulkner's short story, "Golden Land," and Henry George's prescient essay, "What the Railroad Will Bring Us," to which Didion brings a close reading. The settling of California was made possible by the government and the sense of entitlement still resounds, as does the seemingly contradictory rugged pioneer individualism that claims the right to do as one pleases without strings attached. There is a pioneer code, "kill the rattlesnake," meaning to act in the interest of the greater good so others are not hurt, but there is also the overwhelming theme of development, the meaning of which Didion finds in the act of selling the family cemetery, along with the ranch. The lesson about development is also played out through the history of the Lakewood community tangent to LA, one that did not exist until the 1950s when it was created on former ranch land and became a whole town with a resident employer, the defense contractor McDonell Douglas, with whose fortunes, given and taken away by the federal government, it rose and emptied, spewing forth a notoriously violent, purposeless youth culture.
This book resonates deeply with me--as a child, I watched my animal-loving mother weep as she killed the rattlesnake, and the ranch and the winery were gone by the time I was born--but I have to think that this beautifully crafted book should be of value to all Americans because, as John Donne said, none of us is an island and what happens to one part can bear significance for the rest.
20 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Amazing California
25 Oct 2003
Format:Hardcover
I grew up in the mountains south of Yosemite in the 1950's and 60's and have lived here ever since. I've worked as a logger, carpenter, and building designer and now spend much of my time hiking the trails in the High Sierra (not in that Arizona nursing home yet).
Anyway, I've had a lifetime spent drinking in the reality that is California. Reading Joan Didion's book has furthered and edified my knowledge, thoughts, and intuitions of this region. Reviewers who think she is upset or complaining are missing the point. Didion delves deep and helps people like me fill in some blanks to this fascinating human comedy.
Anyway, I've had a lifetime spent drinking in the reality that is California. Reading Joan Didion's book has furthered and edified my knowledge, thoughts, and intuitions of this region. Reviewers who think she is upset or complaining are missing the point. Didion delves deep and helps people like me fill in some blanks to this fascinating human comedy.
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