May 15,2022
In the hackneyed introduction of the essay that names one of her most celebrated books, Joan Didion synthesized a particularly American malaise: “The center was not holding,” she wrote. “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” an essay originally written in 1967, is a first-person immersion in San Francisco’s hippy culture, a raw portrait of what Didion described as a “desperate attempt of a handful of pathetically unequipped children to create a community in a social vacuum.” Through characters like Max, Sharon or Tom, Didion portrayed a generation of nihilist, lost people sucked in a destructive spiral of drugs and despair. “These were children who grew up cut loose from the web of cousins and great-aunts and family doctors and lifelong neighbors who had traditionally suggested and enforced the society’s values,” she wrote.
You can read the article at Medium.
Álex Maroño Porto 