The Thousands

I’m sitting at my desk, watching my girlfriend get dressed in the other room. Through the door, gilded by the morning sun, she zips up her skirt and then fusses over her hair. She looks fantastic, and it’s one of life’s cruel little ironies that she only seems this supernaturally desirable when there is absolutely no chance of congress. It can’t happen; she’s running off to work, "Seriously."

What does all this have to do with Joan Didion’s The White Album? Nothing. I’m just really in the mood for congress this morning.

Now, Joan Didion, she lives five blocks from me here on the upper east side of Manhattan. I’ve never seen her, but since I read about her proximity in the Times last week I’ve kept an eye out. I know she’ll emerge eventually, probably sometime this spring, and when she does I’ll whisper to the wind, "There goes Joan Didion, author of my favourite collection of essays: The White Album." To which the wind will doubtlessly reply, "Oh yeah, I love The White Album! The best part is the fragmentary quality of the narrative; significant cultural events of the 60s drift in the same petri dish as her personal life, lending the text a queer, protean quality that is both appealing and revealing of the dark metaphorical blah blah…" and then I’ll go, "Shush, wind, you’re ruining it."

Buy this book. It is excellent.