Abstract
Joan Didion’s «The White Album» – the key essay of the 1979 nonfiction book of the same name – offers the reader a reflection on the ethical and aesthetic predicament of chronicling the countercultural Zeitgeist of 1960s California by imposing a narrative line on «stories without a narrative». To do so, Didion hones her authorial persona as survivor and witness to the end of a decade that finds its metaphorical climax in the Manson Murders. «The White Album» is therefore by all means a narrative of survival: Didion survives her life in «a senseless killing neighborhood» in L.A., the paranoia of her time, her own multiple sclerosis diagnosis, and her overexposed subjectivity. This essay looks at some of the stylistic devices through which Didion weaves her narrative by juxtaposing disparate and highly idiosyncratic images of that season.
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