“Women who encountered Joan Didion when they were young received from her a way of being female and being writers that no one else could give them. She was our Hunter Thompson, and Slouching Towards Bethlehem was our Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He gave the boys twisted pig-fuckers and quarts of tequila; she gave us quiet days in Malibu and flowers in our hair. “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold,” Thompson wrote. “All I ever did to that apartment was hang fifty yards of yellow theatrical silk across the bedroom windows, because I had some idea that the gold light would make me feel better,” Didion wrote. To not understand the way that those two statements would reverberate in the minds of, respectively, young men and young women is to not know very much at all about those types of creatures. Thompson’s work was illustrated by Ralph Steadman’s grotesque ink blots, and early Didion by the ravishing photographs of the mysterious girl-woman: sitting barelegged on a stone balustrade; posing behind the wheel of her yellow Corvette; wearing an elegant silk gown and staring off into space, all alone in a chic living room.”
The Autum of Joan Didion — By Caitlin Flanagan
IT IS INCREDIBLE
Joan Didion is a gift.
not to hate on j.didion (i’ve always meant to read her, but never have, so i can’t make an assessment in her regard), but the gender assumptions in that quotation are sickening! not every female wants to read about someone’s dramatic tossing of colored tapestries across an apartment wall just because she has a vagina. girls can do drugs and traverse arid lands, too, and boys can stew over the emotional ramifications of their interior decor if they want to.
(via broken-accidental-stars)
