Let Me Tell You What I Mean: A New Collection of Essays by Joan Didion

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Selected essays offering a glimpse into the mind and process of the writer Joan Didion.

Selected essays offering a glimpse into the mind and process of the iconic and influential writer Joan Didion.

Eight essays selected from the 'Let Me Tell You What I Mean' essay collection that offer a glimpse into the mind and process of the iconic and influential writer Joan Didion. 

Mostly drawn from the earliest part of her five-decade career, the wide-ranging pieces in our selection include Didion writing about a Gamblers Anonymous meeting, a visit to San Simeon, and a reunion of WWII veterans in Las Vegas, and about topics ranging from Nancy Reagan to Robert Mapplethorpe. Here are subjects Didion has long written about - the press, politics, California, women, the act of writing, and her own self-doubt. 

Joan Didion began her career in the 1950s after she won an essay contest sponsored by Vogue magazine. She came to prominence with a series of feature articles in Life magazine and The Saturday Evening Post that explored postwar America followed by celebrated novels 'Play It as It Lays' and 'A Book of Common Prayer'. Focusing on California and the chaos of the 1960's, Didion successfully established
 herself as an advocate of New Journalism. Didion passed away in December 2021, aged 87.  It was this same year that this essay collection was published.

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Let Me Tell You What I Mean: A New Collection of Essays by Joan Didion: Episode 4

Episode 4

BBC Radio 4 - Let Me Tell You What I Mean: A New Collection of Essays by Joan Didion, Episode 4

Joan Didion explains the reason why she writes.

In this penultimate essay Joan Didion explains the reason why she writes through questioning the pictures of the mind.

Eight essays selected from the 'Let Me Tell You What I Mean' essay collection that offer a glimpse into the mind and process of the iconic and influential writer: Joan Didion.

Mostly drawn from the earliest part of her five-decade career, the wide-ranging pieces in our selection include Didion writing about a Gamblers Anonymous meeting, a visit to San Simeon, and a reunion of WWII veterans in Las Vegas, and about topics ranging from Nancy Reagan to Robert Mapplethorpe. Here are subjects Didion has long written about – the press, politics, California, women, the act of writing, and her own self-doubt.

Joan Didion began her career in the 1950s after she won an essay contest sponsored by Vogue magazine. She came to prominence with a series of feature articles in Life magazine and The Saturday Evening Post that explored postwar America followed by celebrated novels 'Play It as It Lays' and 'A Book of Common Prayer'. Focusing on California and the chaos of the 1960’s, Didion successfully established herself as an advocate of New Journalism. Didion passed away in December 2021, aged 87. It was this same year that this essay collection was published.

Here Joan Didion explains the reason why she writes through questioning the pictures of the mind.

Why I Write, 1976
Read by Laurel Lefkow
Abridged by Richard Hamilton
Produced by Lorna Newman

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Let Me Tell You What I Mean: A New Collection of Essays by Joan Didion

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