In this age of more information, more sources and more chatter, we are literally surrounded by news. Following the societal changes of the ‘60s, it was “the new journalism” that best reflected the tumult of the events of the day and cast an eye on a future where journalists wrote across the spectrum.
The triumvirate of “new journalists” one needs to know are Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson and Joan Didion.
The intelligent Wolfe had a way of infiltrating all echelons of society and culture. “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” for example, is the best glimpse of the hippie way of life taking shape in 1967 San Francisco. Wolfe also satirized the art community (“Radical Chic”), gave us a winning portrait of the NASA astronauts (“The Right Stuff”) and gave us a glimpse inside the world of custom cars (“The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Dream”).
Similarly, the wild and unkempt Thompson took his reportage one step further, eradicating barriers through copious amounts of substance consumption and going “Gonzo.” As red-eyed as Thompson’s work can be, his analysis is always spot on. After riding with the most notorious biker gang in California (“Hell’s Angels”), he devoted himself to some of the most salient political coverage ever for Rolling Stone magazine (“Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72”).
California-born Joan Didion, however, rarely wrote herself into her stories. In fact, Didion’s greatest skill was merely being there to watch events unfold and rarely having to interview her subjects. History may still prove that Didion’s contribution to “the new journalism” was the greatest of all.
After winning a contest to write for Vogue magazine in the early ‘60s, Vogue wisely kept Didion on as a culture writer. Didion wanted to be a novelist, but to fund her writing she wrote essays for magazines.
These commissioned stories often gave readers everything they needed to know without imposing too much opinion, needlessly drawing connections or conforming to the artificiality of boilerplate interview questions.
Didion, as a nonfiction writer, exposed some of the most unexpected people and their opinions. The real draw of Didion’s writing is her prose-like structure and ability to make her writing both well composed and vividly real.
“My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally obtrusive and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests,” Didion explains in her masterwork “Slouching Towards Bethlehem.”
In her ‘60s collection “Slouching,” Didion sets a new standard for literature, memoirs, journalism and essays, covering different subject matters while managing to maintain a concise voice. In “Slouching,” Didion, unlike Wolfe, remains the detached observer of all things.
When she explores the pre-Summer of Love Haight-Ashbury or interviews her childhood idol John Wayne, her greatest attention is focusing on making the reader feel as though they are there, too. Her life in California is the backdrop for readers exploring Joan Baez, Howard Hughes and even Las Vegas’ wild wedding business.
However, the title essay remains her most trenchant and memorable essay ever. The editors of The Saturday Evening Post probably hoped that the essay “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” would capture the renegade spirit of the hippies setting up their own “utopia” in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco and how youth culture was suddenly flocking to it.
Written before the Summer of Love in 1967, Didion finds the frayed edges of the culture and exposes ambivalence, irresponsible behavior and a terrifying outburst of vulture opportunism and exploitation. She then wisely zooms out to see that the real trend is not the Haight attracting this uptick in youth culture. It is instead the shocking correlation between teen runaways and families shattered by job loss or debt suddenly disappearing from the map.
Her follow-up, “The White Album,” encapsulates the ‘70s with razor-sharp accuracy. Didion uses her home state of California as an illustration for the end of the ‘60s dream.
She listens in on Black Panther Party meetings and rehearsals from The Doors. She interviews Manson family driver Linda Kasabian, and she even unsympathetically buys Kasabian a dress for her court appearance. Didion also dives headfirst into the political history of California, the artistic history of the Getty Museum and draws portraits of the Women’s Movement.
While California may be her home (her family split off from the famed Donner Party and followed the northernmost path to settle there), she shows no sentimentality. She even ends the book with the announcement that she, her husband and child are in Hawaii trying to avoid getting a divorce.
Years later, Didion continued to write about topics like El Salvador, Cuban exiles in Miami, presidential politics in the ‘80s and the death of both her husband and daughter in the space of two years. Didion also wrote a book about her travels in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi during the ‘70s.
While Wolfe and Thompson wanted the reader to feel like they were there dancing to the Grateful Dead or taking an ill-fated train ride through Florida with Edmund Muskie, Joan Didion went farther than both writers to ensure that it was not her turmoil but a shared turmoil that the reader felt. When her own life or desires entered the frame, the picture she was taking was always for the reader.
Mik Davis is record store manager at T-Bones Records & Cafe.
