Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Joan Didion
Reading Schedule
Complete the following reading assignments before coming to
class on the day with which they are listed. Class time will be
given to read and work on assignments, but students are
responsible for staying on schedule. Announced and
unannounced quizzes may cover any material up to the most
recent reading assignment; makeup quizzes may be for any recent
reading assignments at the time of the makeup.
*Unless otherwise noted, HW assignments for the readings will consist of
adding readers journal categories to 10 points (for each nights reading,
NOT for each individual essay)

A Day

B Day

12/4

12/7

12/8

12/9

12/10
12/14

12/11
12/15

12/16

12/17

12/18

12/21

12/22

12/23

1/4

1/5
1/7
1/11-1/13

1/6

Reading*
The Second Coming (Yeats)
Some Dreamers begin in class
Draft of Hamlet essay
Go over IOCD STB practice AND real
information, sign up for both
Finish Some Dreamers
John Wayne
Where the Kissing
Comrade Laski
7000 Romaine
California Dreaming
Marrying Absurd
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
On Keeping a Notebook
On Self-Respect
Final copy of Hamlet essay
I Cant
On Morality
On Going Home
Notes from a
Letter from Paradise
Rock of Ages
The Seacoast of Despair
Guaymas, Sonora
Los Angeles Notebook
Goodbye to All That
In-Class Review: IOCD!
IOCD!!!! Appointment times to come!

1/11-1/15

1/19-1/22

1/27-1/28
2/2-2/3
2/4-2/5

Begin Things Fall Apart

A new reading schedule will be distributed on
this day
Mid-Terms
Expect to complete readings over this time
2nd semester (your last one in high school!)
Things Fall Apart
Finish Things Fall Apart
Begin Their Eyes Were Watching God

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm

looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and
what I fear.

Joan Didion
Joan Didion (born December 5, 1934) is an American author
best known for her novels and her literary journalism. Her
novels and essays explore the disintegration of American morals
and cultural chaos, where the overriding theme is individual and
social fragmentation. A sense of anxiety or dread permeates
much of her work.
In 1956, Didion graduated from the University of California,
Berkeley with a Bachelor of Arts in English. During her senior
year, she won first place in an essay contest sponsored by
Vogue, with the prize of a job at the magazine.
New Journalism seeks to communicate facts through narrative
storytelling and literary techniques. This style is also described
as creative nonfiction, intimate journalism, or literary nonfiction.
It is a popular moment in longer history of literary journalism in
America. Tom Wolfe, who along with E.W. Johnson edited the
anthology The New Journalism (1973), and wrote a manifesto
for the style that popularized the term, pointed to the idea that "it
is possible to write journalism that would ... read like a novel."
New Journalist writers tend to turn away from just the facts
and focus more upon the dialogue of the situation and the
scenarios that the author may have experienced. The style gives
the author more creative freedom and blends elements of fiction,
opinion, and fact. This can help to represent the truth and reality
through the author's eyes. Exhibiting subjectivity is a major
theme in New Journalism. Here, the authors voice is critical to a
reader forming opinions and thoughts concerning the work.
Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem exemplifies much of
what New Journalism represents as it explores the cultural
values and experiences of American life in the 1960s. Didion
includes her personal feelings and memories in this first person
narrative, describing the chaos of individuals and the way in
which they perceive the world. Here Didion rejects conventional
journalism, and instead prefers to create a subjective approach to
essays, a style that is her own.
Didion views the structure of the sentence as essential to what
she is conveying in her work. In The New York Times article,
Why I Write (1976)] Didion remarks, "To shift the structure of a
sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and
inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the
object photographed...The arrangement of the words matters,
and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in
your mind...The picture tells you how to arrange the words and
the arrangement of the words tells you, or tells me, what's going
on in the picture.
Didion is heavily influenced by Ernest Hemingway, whose
writing taught Didion the importance of the way sentences work
within a text. Other influences include writer Henry James, who
wrote "perfect, indirect, complicated sentences" and George
Eliot. Because of her belief that it is the media that tells us how
to live, Joan Didion has become an observer of journalists
themselves. She believes that the difference between the process
of fiction and nonfiction is the element of discovery that takes
place in nonfiction. This happens not during the writing, but
during the research.
There are rituals that are a part of Didion's creative thought
process. At the end of the day, Didion must take a break from
writing to remove herself from the "pages." She feels closeness
to her work; without a necessary break, she cannot make proper
adjustments. Didion spends a great deal of time cutting out and
editing her prose before concluding her evening. The next day,
Didion begins by looking over her work from the previous
evening, making further adjustments as she sees fit. As this
process culminates, Didion feels that it is necessary to sleep in
the same room as her book. In Didion's own words, "That's one
reason I go home to Sacramento to finish things. Somehow the
book doesn't leave you when you're right next to it."
Source: Gale Literature Resource Center

Sample Non-Fiction Questions

Discuss the way the writers have structured their works to make their
material clear and interesting to their audiences.
Personal history as well as the backdrop of events surrounding that
personal history are both significant to many works of prose other than
fiction. Discuss the use made of the interplay between personal history and
the background within which that personal history occurred.
How have two or more writers in your study made particular places or
settings an element of significance in their works?
Where fiction focuses on verisimilitude (a likeness to the recognizable
world but not a mirror image), non-fiction focuses more carefully on
authentic detail. How have texts used authentic detail and to what effect?
Consider the presentation and function of memories that could be seen as
dark or negative in works you have studied.
While fiction is sometimes thought of as the work of an individual
imagination, non-fiction often relies on the experiences of others and can
thus be seen as the result of a group or communal effort. How far and to
what effect have you found evidence of this communal effort in the works
of authors you have studied?
How have writers you have studied used descriptive techniques to evoke a
particular sense of place?
How have writers you have studied made use of anecdotes and/or
analogies to achieve their purposes?

Some writers aim to present an objective view of their material whereas

others openly resort to persuasive techniques. How have writers you have
studied compared or contrasted in relation to this statement and show how
successfully they achieve their aims