The genius of Joan Didion was in her ability to direct her perceptive lens like a microscope at the world around her and extract insights and observations from fine details that illumined the larger subject at hand and made her themes resonate beyond the page. She presented her findings in calm, cool, detached prose that were concise yet piercingly direct. She never indulged in rhetorical flights of fancy, never stooped to easy generalizations, hyperbole or bombast. She never relied on second-hand assumptions and ideological shorthand. Her precision and restraint as a writer kept her honest and allowed her fierce intelligence and well-honed critical thinking faculties to rise to the fore. This is what makes her writing so timeless and her books still relevant today. Above all, her avoidance of such writerly excesses over her decades-long career documenting the politics and cultural events of her time helped her steer clear from ever delivering the type of ponderous screed found here.
The genius of Joan Didion was in her ability to direct her perceptive lens like a microscope at the world around her and extract insights and observations from fine details that illumined the larger subject at hand and made her themes resonate beyond the page. She presented her findings in calm, cool, detached prose that were concise yet piercingly direct. She never indulged in rhetorical flights of fancy, never stooped to easy generalizations, hyperbole or bombast. She never relied on second-hand assumptions and ideological shorthand. Her precision and restraint as a writer kept her honest and allowed her fierce intelligence and well-honed critical thinking faculties to rise to the fore. This is what makes her writing so timeless and her books still relevant today. Above all, her avoidance of such writerly excesses over her decades-long career documenting the politics and cultural events of her time helped her steer clear from ever delivering the type of ponderous screed found here.