by Joan Didion

I picked up this copy from a Friends of the Library bookstore for 25 cents more than a year ago.  All the essays written between 1961 and 1967 are set mainly in California.  Didion’s sharp and dry writing style reflects the image of the dry, golden hills of California that are conjured up when reading these essays.  I enjoyed “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream” the most.  It’s a murder mystery set in the San Fernando valley that also exposes the alienation of suburban America.  The most disturbing essay is “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” about the Haight-Ashbury crowd in the ’60s, because of the scene of a mother giving her five-year-old child a hit of acid.  I can see how anyone reading this essay in 1967 might have easily reviled hippies given the aimless and drug-filled lives Didion writes about.