Slouching Towards Bethlehem

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Slouching Towards Bethlehem

1990 trade paperback cover
Author	Joan Didion
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Essays
Publisher	Simon & Schuster (orig. publisher) & Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Released	1968
Media Type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	238 pp (Farrar, Straus and Giroux paperback edition)
ISBN	0374521727 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux paperback edition)

Slouching Towards Bethlehem is a 1968 collection of essays by Joan Didion and mainly describes her experiences in California during the 1960s. It takes its title from the poem "The Second Coming" by W.B. Yeats.

The title essay describes Didion's impressions of the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco during the neighborhood's heyday as a countercultural center. In contrast to the more utopian image of the milieu promoted by counterculture sympathizers then and now, Didion offered a rather grim portrayal of the goings-on, including an encounter with a pre-school age child who was given LSD by her parents.

In her preface to the book Didion writes, "I went to San Francisco because I had not been able to work in some months, had been paralyzed by the conviction that writing was an irrelevant act, that the world as I had understood it no longer existed. If I was to work again at all, it would be necessary for me to come to terms with disorder."

Contents 1 Contents 1.1 I. Lifestyles in the Golden Land 1.2 II. Personals 1.3 III. Seven Places of the Mind

[edit] Contents

[edit] I. Lifestyles in the Golden Land

• Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream
  Appeared first in 1966 in The Saturday Evening Post under the title "How Can I Tell Them There's Nothing Left."
• John Wayne: A Love Song
  Appeared first in 1965 in The Saturday Evening Post.
• Where the Kissing Never Stops
  Appeared first in 1966 in The New York Times Magazine under the title "Just Folks at a School for Non-Violence."
• Comrade Laski, C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.)
  Appeared first in 1967 in The Saturday Evening Post.
• 7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38
  Appeared first in 1967 in The Saturday Evening Post under the title "The Howard Hughes Underground."
• California Dreaming
  Appeared first in 1967 in The Saturday Evening Post.
• Marrying Absurd
  Appeared first in 1967 in The Saturday Evening Post.
• Slouching Towards Bethlehem
  Appeared first in 1967 in The Saturday Evening Post.

[edit] II. Personals

• On Keeping a Notebook
  Appeared first in 1966 in Holiday.
• On Self-Respect
  Appeared first in 1961 in Vogue.
• I Can't Get That Monster out of My Mind
  Appeared first in 1964 in American Scholar.
• On Morality
  Appeared first in 1965 in American Scholar under the title "The Insidious Ethic of Conscience."
• On Going Home
  Appeared first in 1967 in The Saturday Evening Post.

[edit] III. Seven Places of the Mind

• Notes from a Native Daughter
  Appeared first in 1965 in Holiday.
• Letter from Paradise, 21° 19' N., 157° 52' W
  Appeared first in 1966 in The Saturday Evening Post under the title "Hawaii: Taps Over Pearl Harbor."
• Rock of Ages
  Appeared first in 1967 in The Saturday Evening Post.
• The Seacoast of Despair
  Appeared first in 1967 in The Saturday Evening Post.
• Guaymas, Sonora
  Appeared first in 1965 in Vogue.
• Los Angeles Notebook
  A section entitled "The Santa Ana" appeared first in 1965 in The Saturday Evening Post.
• Goodbye to All That
  Appeared first in 1967 in The Saturday Evening Post under the title "Farewell to the Enchanted City."

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