Haven’t decided on Didion. Some things she writes are breezily anecdotal—and no more—at other times she hits the spot. Here she’s in Greenville, Mississippi, reflecting on New Orleans and the South with locals. The year is 1970.
The time warp: The Civil War was yesterday, but 1960 is spoken of as if it were about 300 years ago.
(from ‘South and West’. The reference to 1960 may be alluding to the possibility of JFK’s election).
[Joan Didion: from ‘South and West’ (pg 34)]
“You-all ought to come visit with us,” a third woman said. They were all young women, the oldest among them perhaps thirty. “I’d play organ for you.”
“We’ll never get up there,” the first woman said. “I never been anyplace I wanted to go.”
(and, a couple of paragraphs lower down the page)
“The isolation of these people from the currents of American life in 1970 was startling and bewildering to behold. All their information was fifth-hand, and mythicized in the hand down. Does it matter where Taos is, after all, if Taos is not in Mississippi?”
