Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion
Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion
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Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Essays

Author: Joan Didion

Narrator: Maya Hawke

Unabridged: 6 hr 23 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/05/2024

Synopsis

This program is read by actor and singer-songwriter Maya Hawke, star of Netflix's Stranger Things.

"Narrating in a voice as clear and sustaining as a cool glass of water, Hawke’s unflashy approach allows the words to reveal their magic."—The Orange County Register

"Didion’s timeless essays shine with Hawke at the helm. This audiobook will bring new listeners to this classic and is highly recommended for libraries everywhere.”—Library Journal (Starred Review)

“Maya Hawke performs this classic collection superbly...Hawke gets Didion's measured pace and thoughtful tone just right as she conveys the much admired author's idiosyncratic, elegant language.”—AudioFile (Earphones Award Winner)

Celebrated, iconic, and indispensable, Joan Didion’s first work of nonfiction, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, is considered a watershed moment in American writing. First published in 1968, the collection was critically praised as one of the “best prose written in this country.”

More than perhaps any other book, this collection by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era captures the unique time and place of Joan Didion’s focus, exploring subjects such as John Wayne and Howard Hughes, growing up in California and the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, and, especially, the essence of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture. As Joyce Carol Oates remarked: “[Didion] has been an articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time, a memorable voice, partly eulogistic, partly despairing; always in control.”

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

About Joan Didion

Joan Didion (1934-2021) was the National Book Award-winning author of many works of fiction and nonfiction. After earning a Bachelor’s degree in English at the University of California, Berkeley, she started her literary career writing articles and essays for Vogue, Mademoiselle, Life, The Saturday Evening Post, and National Review, establishing herself as a prominent member of the New Journalism movement. Her books include The White Album, Play It As It Lays, and Slouching Towards Bethlehem.Shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, Didion’s revelatory memoir The Year of Magical Thinking was adapted as a one-woman stage show starring Vanessa Redgrave on Broadway. She also wrote several screenplays with her husband John Gregory Dunne, including Panic in Needle Park with Al Pacino, the second remake of A Star is Born with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, and an adaptation of her own Play It As It Lays with Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins.

About Maya Hawke

Maya Hawke is an actor, musician, songwriter and producer. Hawke made her acting debut in the miniseries adaptation of the classic novel Little Women for PBS in 2018 and has continued to shine on both the big and small screens, in addition to crafting an acclaimed independent music career. She has released three lauded albums of music to date, Moss (2022), Blush (2020), and Chaos Angel (2024)which showcase her natural gift for songwriting.Maya’s acting credits include the critically acclaimed Netflix drama Stranger Things. Dubbed by Entertainment Weekly as the “breakout star,” Hawke became a fan favorite for her performance as Robin Buckley and received an HCA Award Nomination for her performance. Hawke was also in Showtime’s 2020 historical drama, The Good Lord Bird alongside her father Ethan Hawke. This year, she portrayed“Anxiety” in Disney and Pixar’s Inside Out 2, which became the biggest animated movie of all time,grossing over $1.5 billion. She stars in, and co-produced, Ethan Hawke’s biographical film ofFlannery O’Connor, Wildcat, which premiered at Telluride Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival in 2023, and was released to wide acclaim in 2024.Past film credits include Asteroid City, Do Revenge, Human Capital, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Maestro.Hawke was included in Variety’s 2022 New Power of New York list, the 2023 Young Hollywood Impact Report, and the 2023 TIME100 Next list.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Julie on December 13, 2022

My mother was a freshman in college when I was a freshman in high school. Married at seventeen, her 1960s and 70s were spent as a young wife and mother of four. It wasn't until she divorced at thirty-six, the same year Ronald Reagan ushered in the folly of trickle-down economics and the prison-indus......more

Goodreads review by emma on February 15, 2023

joan forever! i still like didion's longform (longest form?) writing the best, but in truth no one was doing it like her and no one is doing it like her and no one ever will. absolutely one of a kind. bottom line: the very best. ----------------- tbr review the best you can look is if you're carrying a co......more

Goodreads review by Bill on June 13, 2020

Days after Manson died, I kept thinking about him, how he and his Family had summoned the darkness at the heart of the Summer of Love. I remembered how surprised we all were, that the drugs and the smiles and the flowers had come to this, but then I thought, no, not all of us. Joan Didion would have......more

Goodreads review by leah on March 20, 2022

like with any didion work, she always approaches her subjects with such precision and purpose. every language choice is intentional, every sentence is so eloquent, every detail is meticulously written. she perfectly captures the essence of 1960s california and its cultural politics, somehow making m......more

Goodreads review by Justin on April 08, 2019

First published in 1968 to wide popularity, this collection of essays and journalism is a time capsule to the 1960s, for better and for worse, and mostly relating to the experience from a California perspective. There's no question to its significance. When it was published, I suspect readers were t......more

Quotes

“Hawke finds the exact blend of unflappability, dry humor, and sensitivity that does justice to Didion’s observations.”—Kirkus

“In her portraits of people, Didion is not out to expose but to understand, and she shows us actors and millionaires, doomed brides and naive acid-trippers, left wing ideologues and snobs of the Hawaiian aristocracy in a way that makes them neither villainous nor glamorous, but alive and botched and often mournfully beautiful.... A rich display of some of the best prose written today in this country.” —Dan Wakefield, The New York Times Book Review

"These literary gems are the perfect stocking-stuffer size for the serious reader on your list; you’ll look smart wrapping up one or all of them." --USA Today
"A slant vision that is arresting and unique...Didion might be an observer from another planet--one so edgy and alert that she ends up knowing more about our own world than we know ourselves." —Anne Tyler

"The story between the lines of Slouching Towards Bethlehem is surely not so much 'California' as it is [Didion's] ability to make us share her passionate sense of it." —Alfred Kazin

“Give one of these adorable mini-editions of classic nonfiction books by women—only slightly larger than a mobile phone—to a bookish friend, and they’ll get lit, literally.”—BUST


“Gorgeous . . . among the season’s sexiest little literary gifts . . . Close-up portraits of the grand dames by illustrator Celia Carlstedt grace the textured, curve-cornered jackets of these pocket-sized volumes (it’s as if they’ve already been gift wrapped).” —Passport Magazine

Awards

  • Los Angeles Times Best Books of the Year
  • Slate Best Books of the Year
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