Where I Was From

Where I Was From
by Joan Didion

Where I Was From
List Price: $13.95
Our Price: $7.89
You Save: $6.06 (43%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $7.25 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions


(Click here)
Buy this book at online book store in your country
Canada | UK | Germany | France

Book Summary Information

Author: Joan Didion
Edition: Paperback
Published: 2004-09-14
ISBN: 0679752862
Number of pages: 240
Publisher: Vintage

Book Reviews of Where I Was From

Book Review: Some dreamers of the golden dream
Summary: 5 Stars

"A good deal about California does not, on its own preferred terms, add up." This sentence, which opens Didion's third chapter in Where I Was From, is characteristic of the sort of pummeling understatement and reserve that characterizes all of Didion's work - humble, free of ostentation, profound in implication. No, the California Didion presents does not add up - a place defined by a jettisoning pioneer spirit "destroyed" by its own sense of development, a place defined equally by class as it is by people who say sentences like "we don't discuss class here," a place , Didion's Sacramento specifically, both defined by and existing in spite of its geography. Her contradictions of place and identity take Didion from one heavily scrutinized example to another - the Spur Posse, Boeing, Douglas, pioneers on the Sierra Nevadas, prisons, insane asylums - and if Didion's argument of conflicted identity doesn't always connect in thinking later about her specifics, the reading is as fluid, as full-bodied in argument and fact, as merciless an investigation as anything she's ever written. Didion has long been defined by her identity to California, something that comes up in all of her writings, whether in New York or El Salvador, so to see her tackle it so specifically - at one point even deconstructing (with fascinating effect) her own first novel, Run River - is a thrill. What will be of most fascination, undoubtedly, will be the 4th section of the book, the short, devastating section detailing the death of Didion's mother, yet what makes this piece so compelling is the grand scale of Didion's research and work - her California becomes a grand exercise in characterization. Her description in this section is some of the most agonizingly evoked, rich, and understated work of her career, and if the sections preceding it - highly descriptive, full of research often much fuller and drier than expected - can seem aimless when thinking about them, the finest compliment I can give Where I Was From is that, in the effortless and moving reading of the book, it evokes exactly what Didion wants of California, of her, and of her mother, and no more.

Summary of Where I Was From

In her moving and insightful new book, Joan Didion reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history and ours. A native Californian, Didion applies her scalpel-like intelligence to the state’s ethic of ruthless self-sufficiency in order to examine that ethic’s often tenuous relationship to reality.

Combining history and reportage, memoir and literary criticism, Where I Was From explores California’s romances with land and water; its unacknowledged debts to railroads, aerospace, and big government; the disjunction between its code of individualism and its fetish for prisons. Whether she is writing about her pioneer ancestors or privileged sexual predators, robber barons or writers (not excluding herself), Didion is an unparalleled observer, and her book is at once intellectually provocative and deeply personal.

Authors Books

Book Subjects
Most talked about in Summer Reading
There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in The Other America ImageThere Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in The Other America
by Alex Kotlowitz
Anchor; Published: 1992-01-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.99
Price in other shops: $14.95
Life Is Elsewhere ImageLife Is Elsewhere
by Milan Kundera, Aaron Asher
Harper Perennial; Published: 2000-08-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.89
Price in other shops: $13.95
Dry: A Memoir ImageDry: A Memoir
by Augusten Burroughs
Picador; Published: 2004-04-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.79
Price in other shops: $14.00
Where I Was From ImageWhere I Was From
by Joan Didion
Vintage; Published: 2004-09-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.84
Price in other shops: $13.95
We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction (Everyman's Library) ImageWe Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction (Everyman's Library)
by Joan Didion
Everyman's Library; Published: 2006-10-17; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.98
Price in other shops: $30.00
Physik (Septimus Heap, Book 3) ImagePhysik (Septimus Heap, Book 3)
by Angie Sage
Katherine Tegen Books; Published: 2007-04-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $8.20
Price in other shops: $17.99
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) ImageHarry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7)
by J. K. Rowling
Arthur A. Levine Books; Published: 2007-07-21; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.91
Price in other shops: $34.99
The Sound and the Fury ImageThe Sound and the Fury
by William Faulkner
Vintage; Published: 1991-01-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.50
Price in other shops: $11.95
Naked ImageNaked
by David Sedaris
Back Bay Books; Published: 1998-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.49
Price in other shops: $14.99
Russian Debutante's Handbook ImageRussian Debutante's Handbook
by Gary Shteyngart
Riverhead Trade; Published: 2003-04-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.99
Price in other shops: $15.00
Similar Books and other products
Political Fictions ImagePolitical Fictions
by Joan Didion
Knopf; Published: 2001-09-11; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $15.76
Price in other shops: $25.00
After Henry ImageAfter Henry
by Joan Didion
Vintage; Published: 1993-04-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.04
Price in other shops: $14.95
Run River ImageRun River
by Joan Didion
Vintage; Published: 1994-04-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.50
Price in other shops: $14.00
Fixed Ideas: America Since 9.11 ImageFixed Ideas: America Since 9.11
by Joan Didion
New York Review Books; Published: 2003-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.20
Price in other shops: $7.95
A Book of Common Prayer ImageA Book of Common Prayer
by Joan Didion
Vintage; Published: 1995-04-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.89
Price in other shops: $13.95
Play It As It Lays: A Novel ImagePlay It As It Lays: A Novel
by Joan Didion
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2005-11-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.98
Price in other shops: $13.00
The White Album ImageThe White Album
by Joan Didion
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 1990-10-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.88
Price in other shops: $14.00
We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction (Everyman's Library) ImageWe Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction (Everyman's Library)
by Joan Didion
Everyman's Library; Published: 2006-10-17; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.98
Price in other shops: $30.00
The Year of Magical Thinking ImageThe Year of Magical Thinking
by Joan Didion
Vintage; Published: 2007-02-13; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.99
Price in other shops: $13.95
Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays ImageSlouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays
by Joan Didion
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 1990-10-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.90
Price in other shops: $14.00
Book store. Illustrated catalog of books on different categories