Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                

UNLIMITED

The Atlantic

Joan Didion Was Our Bard of Disenchantment

The prolific writer, who died today at 87, was a penetrating anthropologist of American myths.
Source: Kathy Willens / AP

In 1988, Joan Didion joined a scrum of reporters on the tarmac of the San Diego airport to witness the writing of the first draft of history. The assembled journalists were trailing the Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. She was trailing the journalists. Didion watched as a baseball was procured, a staffer tossed the ball to the candidate, he tossed it back—and as the cameras dutifully captured the exchange. She watched as presidential fitness was redefined as athletic prowess with the consent of the national media—as the myths that shape, and limit, Americans’ sense of political possibility were manufactured in real time. She documented the moment in an essay for The New York Review of Books. It was titled “Insider Baseball,” and it has since been, like so many of Didion’s essays, so widely imitated that its innovations can be easy to overlook. But the piece was singular, and scathing: a collective profile of, as she wrote, “that handful of insiders who invent, year in and year out, the narrative of public life.”

Didion died today at 87, still one of this moment’s most

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Atlantic

The Atlantic2 min read
Dining Out Isn’t What It Used to Be
This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning. If you live in a big city, the idea of heading to
The Atlantic3 min read
The Surprising Comedy of a ‘Serious’ SNL Host
Paul Mescal isn’t known for being funny. In breakout dramatic turns such as 2020’s Normal People and 2022’s Aftersun, the Irish actor has consistently painted with more melancholic shades—qualities that he acknowledged last night when he hosted Satur
The Atlantic4 min read
The Syrian Regime Collapsed Gradually—And Then Suddenly
As Hemingway once wrote of bankruptcy, the collapse of autocratic regimes tends to happen gradually and then suddenly—slowly, and then all at once. This is not just a literary metaphor. A tyrant’s followers remain loyal to him only as long as he can

Related Books & Audiobooks