At the age of 16, I was introduced to Joan Didion. My freshman-year English teacher had convinced me to follow the International Baccalaureate (IB) program rather than the AP route for the following three years of high school. In his short pitch, my English teacher stressed the uniqueness of the authors, playwrights, and poets studied throughout the IB program. Before I knew it, I was a junior in high school assigned an entire unit on Joan Didion’s creative nonfiction.
I was almost entirely unfamiliar with creative nonfiction before diving into the brilliance that is the collection of essays called Slouching Towards Bethlehem. As a California native, like Didion, I resonated with her colorful descriptions of Southern California’s blazing summers and Santa Ana winds in “Los Angeles Notebook,” and with her recollections of her Northern California hometown’s gentle yet unsettling nature in “Notes from a Native Daughter.” Didion’s writing was the first to truly enchant me, cloaking me with deep sensations and waves of warmth and second-hand nostalgia. She takes seemingly unbeautiful things and turns them into picturesque, vivid moments in time.
I believe that her writing spoke to me specifically, as she’s an observer by nature. She observes and she writes, never omitting a detail. My brain tends to operate in a similar way, yet much less sophisticated or profound. I observe and write, usually in my Notes app, or one of the many journals I’ve attempted to finish. Before a moment slips away, I jot down the small facets I don’t want to forget. I’m inspired by the way Didion takes the understated happenings of daily life and paints them golden with her words.
Didion makes the sheer act of noticing more wondrous. She inspires me to find greater appreciation and curiosity in simple places. When I return to my hometown, I notice the beauty I once overlooked along the main road I took to school for four years. I appreciate the familiar warm Southern California sunshine after my semesters spent in the Bay. I take mental pictures of the rare moments my childhood friends and I are reunited on my living room couch. Last week, in a state of nostalgia, I picked up my now six-year-old copy of Slouching Towards Bethlehem to reimmerse myself in Didion’s world. Despite my copy’s bent cover and dog-eared book pages, the essays energized me as if it was my first read. Didion represents the honest beauty of observation and personal reflection. While facing the daunting, uncertain realities of senior year, Didion’s work reminds me to pause and acknowledge the compelling nature of our existence.