Joan Didion

Race, class, and gender; these terms are used exhaustively in modern political discourse ad nauseum. Scholars and pundits across the political spectrum debate and ponder as to how they intersect and affect each other, oftentimes coming to wildly diverse conclusions. The bulk of these conclusions are certainly contentious as many are laced with dogmatic political rhetoric, so only those who are in search of confirmation of their viewpoints tend to listen. Each of these terms are invariably…

In Sable and Dark Glasses Joan Didion remembers her distaste for being a child and her yearning for a glamorous, grown up life. I never had much interest in being a child. As a way of being it seemed flat, failed to engage. When I was in fact a child, six and seven and eight years old, I was utterly baffled by the enthusiasm with which my cousin Brenda, a year and a half younger, accepted her mother’s definition of her as someone who needed to go to bed at six-thirty and finish every bite of…

) Thomas Pynchon (1937- ) Kurt Vonnegut (1922- ), Slaughter-House Five (1969) Non-fiction / New Journalism novels Truman Capote (1924-1984), In Cold Blood (1966) Tom Wolfe (1930- ) Norman Mailer (1923-2007), The Armies of the Night (1968) Joan Didion (1934- ) War Novels Norman Mailer (1923-2007), The Naked and the Dead (1948) Irwin Shaw (1913-1984), The Young Lions (1948) James Jones (1921-1977), From Here to Eternity (1951) Herman Wouk (1915- ), The Winds of War (1971) Southern…

The book is so seamlessly written that it is not merely lifelike but also, in the best sense, novel like. It narrates a story in a skillful manner, with much attention to character. DeLillo makes us familiar with some peculiar habits of the characters. Like Everett cannot make himself go to bed at night without checking that the oven is off, and then sometimes double-checking, and reminding himself as he climbs the stairs that he has in fact completed his check. No doubt DeLillo has chosen such…