num_pages: 149
description: From one of our most iconic and influential writers: a timeless collection of mostly early pieces that reveal what would become Joan Didion's subjects including the press politics California robber barons women and her own self-doubt.Here are six pieces written in 1968 from the Points West Saturday Evening Post column Joan Didion shared from 1964 to 1969 with her husband John Gregory Dunne about: American newspapers; a session with Gamblers Anonymous; a visit to San Simeon; being rejected by Stanford; dropping in on Nancy Reagan wife of the then-governor of California while a TV crew filmed her at home; and an evening at the annual reunion of WWII veterans from the 101st Airborne Association at the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas. Here too is a 1976 piece from the New York Times magazine on Why I Write; a piece about short stories from New West in 1978; and from The New Yorker a piece on Hemingway from 1998 and on Martha Stewart from 2000. Each one is classic Didion: incisive bemused and stunningly prescient.
language: English
title: Let Me Tell You What I Mean
publisher: Knopf