Let Me Tell You What I Mean

Zusatztext A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR , Vogue , USA Today, Town & Country, LitHub • A Most Anticipated Book from Vogue, TIME , Bustle , The New York Times, and many more. "Didion's remarkable, five decades-long career as a journalist, essayist, novelist, and screen writer has earned her a prominent place in the American literary canon, and the twelve early pieces collected here underscore her singularity. Her musingswhether contemplating pretty Nancy Reagan living out her middle-class American woman's daydream circa 1948 or the power of Ernest Hemingway's penare all unmistakably Didionesque. There will never be another quite like her." O Magazine [These] essays are at once funny and touching, roving and no-nonsense. They are about humiliation and about notions of rightness. About mythmaking, fiction writing, her failed intellectualism and the syntactic insides of Hemingway's craft. . . . From the outset Didion's nonfiction has shown no obligation to the whopping epiphanic. Realizations occur, but she relates them without splendor, as if she's extracting a tincture. . . . Reading newly arranged Didion [. . .] feels like reaching that dip in a swimming pool where the shallow end suddenly becomes the deep end. The bottom drops out, and you are forced to kick a little, to tread. This is why we return to her work again and again. But Didion cares less for timelessness than for the evanescence of language, mistrusting pink icing or anything else that might launder truth. Undergirding the entire collection is a regard for ephemerality. Of glory, and of the era when fashion photographers called their spaces the studio. Of fairy tales and failed attempts at quietude, of a child's memory soup of imagination. . . . Didion's pen is like a periscope onto the creative mind and, as this collection demonstrates, it always has been. These essays offer a direct line to what's in the offing. --Durga Chew-Bose, The New York Times Book Review The book traces her journey and development as a writer of magisterial (a word she would never use) command and finely measured style. She brought new eyes to the American scene, whether charting the disconnect between traditional and hippie media or with piercing observations of boldfaced names including Ernest Hemingway, Nancy Reagan and Martha Stewart. She intuited the fragmentation that would breed an internet world, and she sensed danger in the shallow myth-making of celebrity journalism. . . . The incomparable journalism and self-reflection that accompanied every stage of her success would build her legacy. . . . The new book captures the essence of Didion in countless lapidary sentences, especially in the 1998 essay Last Words, which deconstructs the lean, deceptively simple opening paragraph of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. . . . She would come to match that economy with unwavering vision, setting a standard for those who have inhaled Didion not just as a writer's writer, but also as a soul still-centered, self-haunted of modern experience. --Matt Damsker, USA Today (???? out of four) There's plenty of journalistic gold in Let Me Tell You What I Mean . . . . What's particularly salient is her trademark farsightedness, which is especially striking decades later. . . . The relevance of her observations in today's fractured world of fringe media is uncannily prescient. --Heller McAlpin, NPR [This collection] brings together previously uncollected pieces in a prismatic retrospective; the critic Hilton Als charts the arc of her career in a rich foreword. . . . As usual, Didion exceeds our expectations. . . . [The essays] follow the chronology of Didion's publication in journals and magazines, but it shifts back and forth in ti...

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR  • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, Vogue, *USA Today, Town & Country,  LitHub • A Most Anticipated Book from *Vogue, TIME, Bustle, The New York Times, and many more.

"Didion’s remarkable, five decades-long career as a journalist, essayist, novelist, and screen writer has earned her a prominent place in the American literary canon, and the twelve early pieces collected here underscore her singularity. Her musings—whether contemplating “pretty” Nancy Reagan living out her “middle-class American woman’s daydream circa 1948” or the power of Ernest Hemingway’s pen—are all unmistakably Didionesque. There will never be another quite like her." —*O Magazine

“[These] essays are at once funny and touching, roving and no-nonsense. They are about humiliation and about notions of rightness. About mythmaking, fiction writing, her “failed” intellectualism and the syntactic insides of Hemingway’s craft. . . . From the outset Didion’s nonfiction has shown no obligation to the whopping epiphanic. Realizations occur, but she relates them without splendor, as if she’s extracting a tincture. . . . Reading newly arranged Didion [. . .] feels like reaching that dip in a swimming pool where the shallow end suddenly becomes the deep end. The bottom drops out, and you are forced to kick a little, to tread. This is why we return to her work again and again. But Didion cares less for timelessness than for the evanescence of language, mistrusting pink icing or anything else that might launder truth. Undergirding the entire collection is a regard for ephemerality. Of glory, and of the era when fashion photographers called their spaces “the studio.” Of fairy tales and failed attempts at quietude, of a child’s memory soup of imagination. . . . Didion’s pen is like a periscope onto the creative mind — and, as this collection demonstrates, it always has been. These essays offer a direct line to what’s in the offing.” --Durga Chew-Bose, *The New York Times Book Review

• • “The book traces her journey and development as a writer of magisterial (a word she would never use) command and finely measured style. She brought new eyes to the American scene, whether charting the disconnect between traditional and hippie media or with piercing observations of boldfaced names including Ernest Hemingway, Nancy Reagan and Martha Stewart. She intuited the fragmentation that would breed an internet world, and she sensed danger in the shallow myth-making of celebrity journalism. . . . The incomparable journalism and self-reflection that accompanied every stage of her success would build her legacy. . . . The new book captures the essence of Didion in countless lapidary sentences, especially in the 1998 essay “Last Words,” which deconstructs the lean, “deceptively simple” opening paragraph of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. . . . She would come to match that economy with unwavering vision, setting a standard for those who have inhaled Didion not just as a writer’s writer, but also as a soul – still-centered, self-haunted – of modern experience.”  --Matt Damsker, USA Today (★★★★ out of four)

“There's plenty of journalistic gold in Let Me Tell You What I Mean. . . . What's particularly salient is her trademark farsightedness, which is especially striking decades later. . . . The relevance of her observations in today's fractured world of fringe media is uncannily prescient.” --Heller McAlpin, NPR
 
“[This collection] brings together previously uncollected pieces in a prismatic retrospective; the critic Hilton Als charts the arc of her career in a rich foreword. . . . As usual, Didion exceeds our expectations. . . . [The essays] follow the chronology of Didion’s publication in journals and magazines, but it shifts back and forth in time as she contemplates the thread of her own…