South and West

One of the Best Books of the Year: NPR, Harper’s Bazaar

“Vintage Didion. . . . Remind[s] us of her brilliance as a stylist, social commentator and observer.” —The Washington Post

“Elegant, eerily prescient. . . .  At once informal and immediate, magisterial and indelible.” —Elle

“Fascinating. . . . Shine[s] with her trademark ability to capture mood and place.” —The New York Times

“In these two pieces, Didion isn’t so much seeing the country as she is x-raying it, cataloging the presenting symptoms of the ailing republic. . . . [This] volume will persist in the memory.” —The Village Voice

“Reveals the author at her most fascinatingly unfiltered. . . . Captures the thrill of a writer discovering her richest subject: the American mythologies that governed her own romantic girlhood.” —Vogue

“Intimate, yet preternaturally detached, as though her matchless ear bears witness from the beyond.” —The Boston Globe

“Exemplif[ies] Didion’s signature brand of reportorial haiku—her pitiless camera eye, razor-sharp wit and telling techniques of self-deprecation that only bring the reader . . . further along for the ride.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Deeply personal. . . . Offer[s] new insight into a formative time in the author’s life.” —Rolling Stone

“One of contemporary literature’s most revered essayists revives her raw records from a 1970s road trip across the American southwest . . . her acute observations of the country’s culture and history feel particularly resonant today.” —Harper’s Bazaar

“Vintage Didion, idiosyncratic and tantalizingly self-revealing.” —USA Today

“This is the charm of South and West: while its political observations are both prescient and canny, the greater pleasure is the view into her mind at work. For a writer who has never shied away from exploring the personal in her writing, Didion’s notebooks might be her most vulnerable work yet.” —Bomb

“Compelling . . . rooted utterly in a past now all but lost to us, while also incredibly timely and relevant.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

“If this is how Didion’s notebooks read, let’s have them all. . . . The form suits her particular brilliance: the ability to sequence arresting sentences, crammed with observation and insight, and let them generate their own momentum.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“A marvelous time capsule. . . . Fascinating documents spiked with virtuosic turns. . . . Cast[s] light backward and forward on her work, illuminating her reportorial process and the themes she would develop in later novels and nonfiction.” —Vulture

“[Didion’s] idiosyncratic genius is in full evidence in South and West. . . . Didion seemed to be aware that she was recording a singular moment in the culture. . . . She did not want to transcend the madness of the day, escape it, but rather to capture it completely.” —Newsweek

“Engaging and haunting. . . . Didion’s observations of the South are remarkable to read, dripping with a sense of unease. . . .  Didion at her most unfiltered. Those who admire her will find this glimpse into her notebooks exhilarating.” —Paste

“An amazing snapshot of Didion at work, her interviews with regular folks, her descriptions of motels and highways in one section and of what California means to her in another.” —Austin American-Statesman