The White Album
"The White Album is a mosaic of a time, a mosaic that includes, among other bizarre artifacts and personalities, the dark journeys and impulses of the Manson Family and the Ferguson brothers, the story of Bishop James Pike, and of John Paul Getty's museum, the biker cult, the saga of the California governor's mansions, the romance of water in an arid landscape, the swirl and confusion of th Sixties (the women's movement, the Panthers, Berkeley), and the experience of getting away--to Bogotá, to Las Vegas, the Islands, the road or simply to bed--and coming home again"--Cover.
Stats for nerds
3recommend
3mentions
3people
2018–2026years
100% recommend
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- The White Album is awesome. Other Didion on California is kind of conservative and dismissive of the changes in culture among young people.
- There's a fantastic series of podcasts on great essays by David Runciman from the London Review of Books, which aren't always the ones you'd expect given the authors:
Michel de Montaigne, "Essays": https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/history-o...
David Hume, "Of Public Credit:": https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/history-o...
David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience": https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/history-o...
Virginia Woolf, "A Room of One’s Own": https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/history-o...
George Orwell, "The Lion and the Unicorn": https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/history-o...
Simone Weil, "Human Personality": https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/history-o...
James Baldwin, "Notes of a Native Son": https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/history-o...
Susan Sontag, "Against Interpretation": https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/history-o...
Joan Didion, "The White Album": https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/history-o...
David Foster Wallace, "Up, Simba!": https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/history-o...
Umberto Eco, "Thoughts on Wikileaks": https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/history-o...
Ta-Nehisi Coates, "The Case for Reparations": https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/history-o...
- One worthwhile vantage point from which to understand the foul and self-serving element of the 1960s in California is Joan Didion’s essay collection The White Album, published 1979. And in particular the title essay, which deals partly with the Manson cult.
It is a fascinating book, and she is such a singular writer, with a different and unique viewpoint of the 60s (being older than the hippies and not temperamentally suited to an optimistic worldview anyway), that it is completely worth your time.
Another reference point, come to think of it, is T.C. Boyle’s novel Drop City, which also features an idealistic commune that starts out in California and relocates (kids and all) to a remote place once the Man catches up to them. It also does not end well.
(Edited to add: not knocking the 60s as a whole, or optimism, or hippies, each of which has/have their place in my heart.)
