What did you learn from Joan Didion's "Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream" about writing in general or telling a story in particular?
Respond by noon Monday, March 23.
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17 comments:
First of all, I must say that this is the best piece of writing I've read in this class. It is so effortless and fluid that it's hard to tell how she pulled it off.
The writing mirrors the emotional tone of the story: something that is only special in how tortuously normal it is, a piece of desperate trash that is only special because Southern California was desperate and trashy enough to be enthralled. In the story, you feel for the characters as much as you don't care about them, and want to turn away from the whole perverse, dusty mess.
The story taught me several things about writing. It taught me that the writing style needs to reflect not only the emotional tone of the story, but the INTENTION of the story. One has to choose every single word with the last word in mind. Whenever I write I come up with the final scene first, and this is the problem with my current piece: I really have no idea where it's leading, so I don't know how to write it. This is something I really have to figure out.
This piece also shows how to drop it. My favorite part of the story was on page seven, when "a tape recording of the service was made for the widow, who was being held without bail in the San Bernardino Jail on the degree of first-degree murder." Didion dropped both the emotions and plot of the main story at the end of the initial description. This is the opposite of what everyone is taught, but because of the emotional tone of the story (see above) it makes more sense; though the most important part, it's not dropped till the end, almost as an afterthought--yes, these things happen in the divorce and suicide of the Santa Ana winds.
It also makes more sense to place this revelation at the end of the introduction for the sake of plot. We get Lucille's description of the events, and then sit back as the mystery unfolds as if it was in real time. It's as if we are following the whole thing in the papers. The whole story is basically a mystery, but after we peel away all the layers, we see that there is no answers. Didion realizes that there is no way to figure out the exact motivations of the main players, but instead of this being a deficiency, she uses to to reveal one of the truths of the story: that there is no truth.
Which is what Professor Good has been teaching all semester.
This story is fuckin genius.
I wish I could write like this.
I think the thing that stood out the most to me and seemed most relevant, important and reflective of what we've been discussing for the past two semesters, is that simple is best. Didion writes simplistically in the sense that she uses common words that the average reader could understand. It's in the way that she uses these words to structure her sentences and move the story along that is far from simple. She says so much and touches on such big topics and ideas in the most basic ways. She manages to tell more than one story through each other. "Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream" is as much about society in the '70s as it is about the trial of Lucille Miller. She uses both these stories to say what she wants to say. I think the fact that she writes in a way that seems simple and moves along so quickly is what makes this piece even more effective and an example of good writing. She uses transitions that are like a journey...each new scene is another trip somewhere, down a street or from event to event, it's like we're reading a play by play of events that have such detail and move so fast that we can't stop reading. Because of these transitions it feels like you have to read it faster and faster as the action moves and culminates. The characters aren't described that in depth yet Didion captures the very characteristics we need to understand and relate to them.
It seems the most important thing to realize is that wordiness isn't necessarily better. Clear, concise, simple writing can speak to readers of all types and on just as many levels.
I guess everything happens for a reason, because after reading this piece I now finally understand what you have attempting to drill in my head for the previous semester, and even more so this semester, "less is always more!" I can be very wordy with my work because I can't help but have the sensation or feeling of "the readers need to know this in order to feel this." It was almost like a eureka moment after reading this piece!
I've often had problems with imitating other writers because something about it just doesn't seem authentic to me, but after reading this, developing a style such as Didion's can not be viewed as a mimic, but more so viewed as an honor. She has a way with her word usage, they are very simple words, that say so much, and feel so big, packed with such great meaning. Her words make me feel many different emotions about the characters, and the funny thing is she doesn't elaborate to much about the characters, just enough for me to understand them and relate to them if I choose to.
Also, its as if shes telling two different stories but at the same time only telling one. very incredible piece of work, the unveiling of the plot and the sense of real time within the story makes me say/see these things as well. Not only was I able to grasp what the idea of society was like during that time period, I was also able to here and physically see the story. Incredible work, just simplistic at its best.
Reading this story has given me a new angle to tell my story from that I thought was irrelevant, but now i see that it is very relevant, and I am confident now that my readers will grasp and understand my story on a greater level.
I first need to say that Didion is one of all time favorite writers and Slouching Towards Bethlehem is in my top 3 books of all time. She’s amazing. With that said:
Didion confronts the readers immediately by stating “this is a story about…” We know immediately that this story is about much more than the trial which she is reporting. (This is a style that is very different from Wolfe, where the larger image is never mentioned, only alluded to.) So, what is this story about? It is about “a place where people are trying to find a new lifestyle, trying to find it in the only places they know to look: the movies and the newspapers.” In other words, this story is a social critique on the mass media and its devastating influence on its “dreamers” (A critique which is much needed today).
She attributes all of the motives of all those involved in the trial (and those not-so-much-involved) to the false reality that the media portrays: love, beauty, sex, fame, money. By doing this, she is not criticizing those involved personally. It is not their fault they crave these desires, it was forced upon them by a body/institution that is too influential to ignore. This idea of false reality/hidden truth is then hit on the head in the last sentence of the story: “A coronet of seed pearls held her illusion veil”. That’s good. Really good.
The images Didion gives as descriptions of the country in the beginning graphs are attached to non-specific people and situations that could be attached to “anyone”: “The country of teased hair and the Capris and the girls for whom all life’s promises come down to a waltz-length white wedding dress and the birth of a Kimberly or a Sherry or a Debbi and a Tijuana divorce and a return to hairdressers’ school.”
As we get further into the story, we see the specific reference to Lucille Miller:
“ ‘So I had her panties and bra on her and they opened the door again, so I got some Capris on her, you know, and a scarf./ a meticulous woman who insisted, against her lawyer’s advice, on coming to court with her hair piled high and lacquered.” This technique puts a specific face and situation to a person struggling to survive in this media-run country.
Structurly, Didion is incredibly influential to me. The story is a series of larger journeys (country, state) wrapping around smaller journeys (the town, the street, the house, the jail).
She is amazing.
I have read this piece before and time and time again I find it flawless. What strikes me the most about Didion is that she uses language just like the rest of us. It’s as if she were speaking very clearly from her mouth, and as if these were not words for reading. Her writing is not flowery or clouded with metaphors. It is literally as if anyone could pick up a pen and recount the events at Banyan Street with Lucille Miller – but anyone can not. There is something Didion does every so subtly that sets her writing apart from simple language.
In this piece I find that she has told the story with a great clarity. The characters are well constructed. There is enough information so we can get a “feel” for them, but there isn’t a overbuilding of the characters, to the point where we might feel as if we cannot wrap our minds around them. Didion’s imagery is stark. I can see the lemon groves, I can see Lucille Miller run up and down a small town road, and I can see a huge fire engulfing a car in the background. Didion does not ornament these images – she tells them just as they are, and that’s how it should be.
Needless to say, Didion is one of my favorite writers. Having read The Year of Magical Thinking and Play It As It Lays, I have come to see that her writing is so clear that it is shocking. You are dragged in by the rawness of it all. She hides nothing and she writes like no other. If it teaches me anything, it is that I need to fully understand my voice and then fully refine it – say things simply, eloquently, with justice and not riddled with unnecessary prose.
The plot thickens.
That was running through my mind as I read this. I enjoyed how Didion opened up with: "This is a story about love and death in the golden land, and begins with the country." At first, I thought that was almost too much. It was telling, not showing. But then as I continued reading, I found that by Didion beginning her story about the country parallels the actual story of the car accident and murder.
Didion uses such a simple vernacular, but her approach in the story-telling is so creative and sophisticated.
If this story was in conventional news format, it would be the same old, same old. Women in car accident; linked to murder. Something like that. And sure, those juicy details stir excitement in readers, but it doesn't leave a lasting impression like this one.
I learned that I can write something like this, too. If I ask questions, am observant, use just the basic skills in reporting a story and get enough detail,I can write like Didion.
Setting a scene is always important in order to allow the reader to fully envision a story in our minds. Didion in "Some Dreamers Never Wake up" does a great job of opening the story with background of the surrounding area, which is mostly achieved when she take the reader on a sort of journey throughout the surrounding towns, in order to show where Lucille was from. Through this imagery and description I really felt enabled me to get a good sense of where the people where from, and you felt like you were there.
Also the way you developing characters in a story is important. By starting with a background of the characters before telling the actual sotry of the accident, Didion allows us to get a sense of who they were, which allows the reader to relate to their problems.
Organization is also crucial in order to keep the story flowing and the reader interested. Didion does a good job of keeping a level of suspense throughout the story by slowly introducing more characters and scenarios that thicken the plot. The story never gets boring or drags on and the reader is there to the end wondering what the outcome of the trail is going to be.
Didion is a master of conversational writing, as many have said. I agree with Allie, and I'd say sophisticated is a perfect word for it.
I learned how to be disconnected but not completely aloof, subtle yet harsh and appropriately inappropriate. Completely dry yet drenched in the dark humor of everyday life. I learned that even the trivial can be bigger than life when written well, and a "bigger picture" is always looming. That sometimes stating your purpose must be done. I, too, learned that I can write like Didion, can write like Wolfe, can write like Thompson if I want to, and if I take the time to care about what I'm writing. But most important is that once I learn the skill of these writers I don't get stuck in imitation, but rather in creation of writing like me.
Her story fits Professor G's poem "How to Write a Story" to a tee--She literally begins in the middle, with the screams of something burning.
Didion then drops her trail of bread crumbs perfectly, leaving little bits and then straying from the path completely. She takes us in a new direction, yet leaves another nugget that will lead us back to the way we need to take. "The case of Lucille Marie Maxwell Miller is a tabloid monument to that new life style.", "...was where at about 12:30 a.m., her 1964 Volkswagen came to a sudden stop, caught fire, and began to burn.", "It was April 24, 1964, when Arthwell Hayton's wife, Elaine, died suddenly, and nothing good happened after that.", and the part that others have mentioned, ""...was made for the widow, who was being held without bail in the San Bernardino Jail on a charge of first-degree murder."
She has dubious search parties, always looking for the solution, the ultimate truth and the reason why people act the way they do. She plays on our emotions, poking at our stubbornly bleeding brains--getting us to care for people and a story we normally wouldn't give a damn about.
Didion's secret is simple: she can always, always bring the reader into the scene. She has a way of being descriptive so that you can see just what she's describing without being loquacious. Phrases such as "prickly dread", "unsettingly glossy", and "the greenery of a nightmare" are beautiful and unique in the way they make you understand what she's discussing.
Another thing about Didion, and this piece, is that she takes you on a "journey" with her. Her transitions are smooth so that you almost don't notice you're entering another life, another story. I remember the first time I read The White Album, all I could think was, I want to write like this. The thing that captures me most about Didion are those unique phrases she often uses. I know those aren't easy to just conjure up, but it's what I admire most. If I had to list one thing I learned about writing from reading Didion, it's that writing a story is really about taking the reader on a journey. No one is going to get on the bus with you if you're boring or dancing around the point. It is a writer's job to allow the reader to see what they have seen, which Didion does, everytime.
Didion sets up the scene with simple, yet descriptive words to portray the perfect image that California depicts. Fame and fortune is evident and it oozes out of the first few lines. An eerie tone is set up quickly in the same paragraph. It encourages the reader to see past the pristine image and into the questionable aspects. Didion portrays this in a very simple manner and cannot be more clear- she even uses the word ominous to describe the country.
Didion's quick mention of divorce also sets the scene for the rest of the story. It reminds me of a quote my professor once told us that if you describe the gun on the mantle in the first scene, it better come back to kill someone by the end. Didion comes full circle with the mentioning of it and adds many surprises along the way- this is not your typical story about divorce. While it is mentioned many times in the story, it is not repetitive. It flows very smoothly.
My favorite parts of the story is when Didion describes what happened on page 12 and 13. She is very clear and succinct. It reads like a police report, but not nearly as dry. She captures every detail and causes the reader to question the situation. Her writing is very clean.
Like many people have already mentioned, such details are examples of the writing Professor Good encourages us to strive for. It is important to use detail that contributes to the story, but discard those that do not. Every single line of this story is applicable and contributes to the plot. It reads easy with many twists and turns, which encouraged me to keep reading until the very end. Each character has a personality and the reader can relate to them. I feel as if the reader also wants to learn more about them, which is what makes this story so intriguing.
Out of all stories we red so far I think that Joan Didion's "Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream" would be my favorite. It is a first piece by this author I have ever touched, but definitely not the last one.
I admire the effortless way the story was written. Although the language is simple and sentences are short ("There has been no rain since April. Every voice seems a scream") the story is full of details.
I think that the main thing I would learn from Didion is that less is more. Sometimes the most interesting stories should be told with the simple language, without any exaggerations. I also like the way she uses repetitions in her sentences. It makes story to flaw better, more like someone is telling this, not writing.
Reading "Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream" I could almost feel the sun and the atmosphere Didion describes. Even when she writes about crime, she do not use "ugly and drastical" language, but focuses more on trial.
At the times I had a feeling like I am watching the movie. On the page 5 when she describes the way to get to Banyan Street I felt like it is the visual from the panning camera. The trial scenes on the other side remind me of one of the popular crime programs, like "CSI" or "Law and Order".
Here in Didion's piece, I saw the power of simplicity mixed in with the story telling elements of hard boiled crime novels such as Double Indemnity which she mentions more then once. I saw in this piece a grace of words and imagery like an Ansel Adams landscape, black and white yet bursting with a depth of meaning and awe which lies just underneath the surface. I learned that a minor word here and there within a seemlingly basic sentence can completely change its interpretation. Most powerfully, I think, I saw a foundation of detailed, through, inquisitive investigative reporting. She talked to everyone and moreover she found an area in which she made her opinions clear without coming off as preachy. Didion delved into much deeper and pertinent issues, talking about the American Dream, as many other of the writers we have read have talked about. I think I want to take away most of all from this piece is her highly investigative, passionate, and cinematic reporting techniques.
The one thing that stood out to me the most in Didion’s piece was how effectively she used quotes in her story. Every single quote that I read added an extra punch to the story that couldn’t have been achieved in any other way. To paraphrase the quotes would have been to take out the gems of the story. Yet, she chooses her quotes very effectively. Didion used quotes like drops of oil to help the mechanical parts of her story move along at a furious pace. If I had to pick a favorite quote in the story it would be the passage: “‘Lucille wanted to see the world,’ her father would say in retrospect, ‘and I guess she found out.’” To me, that is the one quote that best summarizes the whole piece and packs the greatest punch. Ironically, the story felt like gasoline being poured out, a fire being lit, the blaze rising higher and higher, until finally everything was burnt to a smoldering heap.
In a spring break that was filled with successful open mic performances and horribly late bedtimes, this story was that one good dose of darkness that I needed. Didion's story about the not-so-sunny life of California taught me a lesson in taking one idea and thrusting it into the opposite. For instance, there's the passage of "January 11, 1965, was a bright warm day in Southern California, the kind of day when Catalina floats on the Pacific horizon and the air smells of orange blossoms and it is a long way from the bleak and difficult East, a long way from the cold, a long way from the past. A woman in Hollywood staged an all-night sit-in on the hood of her car to prevent repossession by a finance company. A seventy-year-old pensioner drove his station wagon at five miles an hour past three Gardena poker parlors and emptied three pistols and a twelve-gauge shotgun through their windows, wounding twenty-nine people."
THAT, in my opinion, was a pivotal part. The ability to paint a picture of serenity and splash red and black all over. That kind of writing that Didion uses is something that really caught my attention, throwing the audience into a state of "holy crap!" I'd love to do that more often.
This was one of my favorite stories that we have read in both this and last semester. What I really liked were Didion's transitions. From paragraph to paragraph everything flowed together perfectly. If a phrase was repeated at the end of one paragraph, then it was contradicted at the beginning of the next in order to move the story along. If a character was introduced at the end of a paragraph, the next paragraph began from their point of view. This piece has really showed me a lot about third person writing which is still something I am very much trying to get a handle on. I am much more comfortable writing about myself but that is such a cop out and a habit I hope to break. Didion shows that you can make even seemingly dreadfully dull situations and people an interesting read by using words and descriptions intentionally and doing your subject justice.
ps I apologize for this being late. I left the handouts at school by accident and didn;t get back to NP until about 115pm today.
I read this piece over winter break and I have to say that I immediately fell in love with it and Didion. Her writing is just so beautiful (cliche, I know) but there's something about it that just hits you. Going back to the story, I tried looking for more detail on the writing and not just the plot that I had liked so much before on my first time through.
The one thing I noticed the most was her ability to set a complete scene. She places you right into the setting and does so with really intricate detail. She explained the San Bernardino Valley's history, gave you details of the roads and even what kind of people live there. She also offered her own sort of interpretation/observation with two of my favorite quotes in the piece: "The future always looks good in the golden land, because no one remembers the past," and "Here is the last stop for all those who come from somewhere else, for all those who drifted away from the cold and the past and the old ways."
And, she does this all with really simple and clean prose. She uses the words we say in passing every day. It's easy to read and flows effortlessly. That's something I think all writers should strive for (I know it's something that I am working on), to have your work read easily and move quickly and seamlessly. Didion just describes everything so quick and with such ease. One of my favorite descriptions, "...she was an eighteen-year-old possessed of unremarkable good looks and remarkable high spirits," is just so simple yet says so much. That's something I want to master.
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