This is an interactive post, with pictures and accessible links, so that you can feel yourself inside the book. Enjoy! :)
I took all summer to read this book.
And i know you’re wondering: "You took all summer to read one single fucking book? What are you, 10?"
I kindly remember my ex boyfriend telling me these exact same words. And no, I’m not fucking ten, you piece of shit. I just really, really, really love this book. I love to savor every bite, unlike my own father, who opens the granola bag just to eat the chocolate chips.
I wish you could see my copy of "The White Album" right now: It’s musty, dusty, crusty and full of sand from many summers ago. Because, you probably guessed it, I’ve been reading it every summer ever since I was fifteen. What SCREAMS "summer’ more than this beauty right here?
Once the sun is out, Joan Didion meets my eyes, my heart and my soul.
PART ONE: WE ALL TELL STORIES IN ORDER TO LIVE.
We all tell stories in order to live.
‘We tell ourselves stories in order to live...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the "ideas" with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.’
Joan Didion
Within her book’s first sentence, Joan Didion invites you to a puzzling, strange new world: Los Angeles in the 1960s. They all told stories in order to live. The poor girl from the countryside that made it to Hollywood and became a star, a mad man who used to walk by unnoticed on the streets that became the leader of a bloody cult… We live vicariously through these stories, whether they’re real or not. We need to hear the meritocracy myth at least a dozen times before getting out of bed. We NEED stories in order to live. Even if that means we’re disrespecting the demise of others that were affected. Even if we’re disrespecting the main ‘characters’ in these stories. We need them.
And this is Joan’s.
The first segment of this book is undeniably my favorite. We get a glimpse of Joan’s fast, hectic life in the sixties. She tells us about her big house on Franklin ave, and tells tales about the incomparable, weird and unsettling life in 1960’s Los Angeles.
And let me tell you: She was everywhere.
My girl Joan was everywhere, from a "The Doors" studio session, meeting a very mysterious and persuasive Jim Morisson, to having conversations with Linda Kasabian, main witness to the ‘Manson trials’ . These, if you don’t remember, were the murders of Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring, Voytek Frykowski, Steven Parent and Rosemary and Leno Labianca. Such murders being the ones that for many, marked the official ending of the 1960s, when a counterculture against the actual counterculture started. And the rest is history.
Joan’s ‘Franklin Avenue’ house
Linda Kasabian, main witness and member of the ‘Manson family’ cult (center).
Sharon Tate, as we all should remember her.
A 1960s ‘Greetings from Hollywood’ post card. Just so you get the vibe.
This is what a ‘The Doors’ studio session sounded like in 1969.
Anyway, the sixties were wild, and Joan was no stranger to that.
On this first part of the book, she also details her encounters with important political members of the 1960s, such as Eldridge Cleaver, an activist who became an early leader of the Black Panther Party, and Huey Newton, the founder of the Black Panther Party. My friend Joan was also seeing the protests of the San Francisco State University and gave us much detail about the political background of the US in the 60s. But don’t be fooled. Joan Didion’s writing from the 1960s and 1970s, especially “The White Album” is characterized by a pessimism about the New Left.
She thought hippies and the rest of the counterculture were worthy of some disregard, you know? And she thought radicals like Eldridge and Huey, that commanded parties like The Black Panther Party were both far from attaining power and societal force, and represented menaces to society.
Eldridge Cleaver (1935-1998)
Huey P. Newton (1942- ASSASSINATED 1989)
Footage Of The Black Panther Party
Historical Footage And Interviews With Members of The Black Panther Party
JODI, 1967.
Remembering The San Francisco State University Protest and Strike.
Voice reporter Jack Newfield on police and journalist behavior at the Columbia student protests in 1968:
" The Times itself was unethically implicated in the planning of the police raid".
“Since the police had provided the paper with a detailed copy of their plans for arresting the students, possibly in expectation of a quid pro quo, whereby the police would receive favorable news and editorial coverage in return for their inside information.”
- Smoking Typewriters; John McMillian.
Interesting, right?
It always amazes me how a book like this can be so aware of it’s time, and carry so much context within it.
Some of you might’ve already seen this picture:
Joan’s "packing list"
This, as much as it appears to be ‘just a list’ is essential to her story, obviously being what she brought with her during her travels, because, as I told you, she was everywhere. She was at the right places, at the right times. A woman of her time and a big part of American history, always on the sidelines of trials, music studios, college unions, countless hotels, and curiously, never at home.
In between all that, she shares her sclerosis diagnosis with us, readers, as another circumstance of the madness of her current time being. She doesn’t address it as something sad, or tragic , not even as ‘having a disease’. For her, it’s just another one of the many coincidences of events combined, something that surrounds her life and haunts her being (or not really). Just like her and R*man P*lanski being the godparents of the same kids. A fucked up coincidence.
At the sound of ‘Lay, lady, Lay’ and ‘Suzanne’, this first part of "The White Album" shows us how crazy the sixties were. And by telling us how bits of her own personal story were tied up to the greatest American events to ever happen in the 1960s (with a very visible string), our friend Joan Didion immortalizes that time in history, and makes it unforgettable, even for those like me, who never lived it, and she will continue to do so forever. Because good work is eternal.
Even though Eldridge Cleaver moved back to Argelia, even though Jim Morrison died in Paris, even though Linda Kasabian ran away to New Hampshire after the trials ended, "The White Album" will always sit still in time, like a sixties bible, where everything is in constant change, and the meaning of American democracy is resumed in a noun called dichotomy.
Dichotomy: A division or contrast between TWO things that are represented as being opposed or entirely different. Special thanks to Caleb for telling me that.
*END OF PART ONE*
You can get “The White Album” at a local bookstore near you! Join me for part two!
Typewriter …
Cigarettes …
Bourbon!
One of my all-time favorite books by one of my all-time favorite authors.
Nice post.
me when i just finished the white album this summer after starting it at the beginning of LAST summer…wish i could say it’s because i was intentionally taking my time but really i’m just scatterbrained. still loved it, and im excited to hear the rest of ur thoughts!!