Image by David Shankbone, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In a clas­sic essay of Joan Didion’s, “Good­bye to All That,” the nov­el­ist and writer breaks into her narrative—not for the first or last time—to prod her read­er. She rhetor­i­cal­ly asks and answers: “…was any­one ever so young? I am here to tell you that some­one was.” The wry lit­tle moment is per­fect­ly indica­tive of Didion’s unspar­ing­ly iron­ic crit­i­cal voice. Did­ion is a con­sum­mate crit­ic, from Greek kritēs, “a judge.” But she is always fore­most a judge of her­self. An account of Didion’s eight years in New York City, where she wrote her first nov­el while work­ing for Vogue, “Good­bye to All That” fre­quent­ly shifts point of view as Did­ion exam­ines the truth of each state­ment, her prose mov­ing seam­less­ly from delib­er­a­tion to com­men­tary, anno­ta­tion, aside, and apho­rism, like the below:

I want to explain to you, and in the process per­haps to myself, why I no longer live in New York. It is often said that New York is a city for only the very rich and the very poor. It is less often said that New York is also, at least for those of us who came there from some­where else, a city only for the very young.

Any­one who has ever loved and left New York—or any life-alter­ing city—will know the pangs of res­ig­na­tion Did­ion cap­tures. These eco­nom­ic times and every oth­er pro­duce many such sto­ries. But Did­ion made some­thing entire­ly new of famil­iar sen­ti­ments. Although her essay has inspired a sub-genre, and a col­lec­tion of breakup let­ters to New York with the same title, the unsen­ti­men­tal pre­ci­sion and com­pact­ness of Didion’s prose is all her own.

The essay appears in 1967’s Slouch­ing Towards Beth­le­hem, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive text of the lit­er­ary non­fic­tion of the six­ties along­side the work of John McPhee, Ter­ry South­ern, Tom Wolfe, and Hunter S. Thomp­son. In Didion’s case, the empha­sis must be decid­ed­ly on the lit­er­ary—her essays are as skill­ful­ly and imag­i­na­tive­ly writ­ten as her fic­tion and in close con­ver­sa­tion with their autho­r­i­al fore­bears. “Good­bye to All That” takes its title from an ear­li­er mem­oir, poet and crit­ic Robert Graves’ 1929 account of leav­ing his home­town in Eng­land to fight in World War I. Didion’s appro­pri­a­tion of the title shows in part an iron­ic under­cut­ting of the mem­oir as a seri­ous piece of writ­ing.

And yet she is per­haps best known for her work in the genre. Pub­lished almost fifty years after Slouch­ing Towards Beth­le­hem, her 2005 mem­oir The Year of Mag­i­cal Think­ing is, in poet Robert Pinsky’s words, a “traveler’s faith­ful account” of the stun­ning­ly sud­den and crush­ing per­son­al calami­ties that claimed the lives of her hus­band and daugh­ter sep­a­rate­ly. “Though the mate­r­i­al is lit­er­al­ly ter­ri­ble,” Pin­sky writes, “the writ­ing is exhil­a­rat­ing and what unfolds resem­bles an adven­ture nar­ra­tive: a forced expe­di­tion into those ‘cliffs of fall’ iden­ti­fied by Hop­kins.” He refers to lines by the gift­ed Jesuit poet Ger­ard Man­ley Hop­kins that Did­ion quotes in the book: “O the mind, mind has moun­tains; cliffs of fall / Fright­ful, sheer, no-man-fath­omed. Hold them cheap / May who ne’er hung there.”

The near­ly unim­peach­ably author­i­ta­tive ethos of Didion’s voice con­vinces us that she can fear­less­ly tra­verse a wild inner land­scape most of us triv­i­al­ize, “hold cheap,” or can­not fath­om. And yet, in a 1978 Paris Review inter­view, Didion—with that tech­ni­cal sleight of hand that is her casu­al mastery—called her­self “a kind of appren­tice plumber of fic­tion, a Cluny Brown at the writer’s trade.” Here she invokes a kind of arche­type of lit­er­ary mod­esty (John Locke, for exam­ple, called him­self an “under­labour­er” of knowl­edge) while also fig­ur­ing her­self as the win­some hero­ine of a 1946 Ernst Lubitsch com­e­dy about a social climber plumber’s niece played by Jen­nifer Jones, a char­ac­ter who learns to thumb her nose at pow­er and priv­i­lege.

A twist of fate—interviewer Lin­da Kuehl’s death—meant that Did­ion wrote her own intro­duc­tion to the Paris Review inter­view, a very unusu­al occur­rence that allows her to assume the role of her own inter­preter, offer­ing iron­ic prefa­to­ry remarks on her self-under­stand­ing. After the intro­duc­tion, it’s dif­fi­cult not to read the inter­view as a self-inter­ro­ga­tion. Asked about her char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of writ­ing as a “hos­tile act” against read­ers, Did­ion says, “Obvi­ous­ly I lis­ten to a read­er, but the only read­er I hear is me. I am always writ­ing to myself. So very pos­si­bly I’m com­mit­ting an aggres­sive and hos­tile act toward myself.”

It’s a curi­ous state­ment. Didion’s cut­ting wit and fear­less vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty take in seem­ing­ly all—the expans­es of her inner world and polit­i­cal scan­dals and geopo­lit­i­cal intrigues of the out­er, which she has dis­sect­ed for the bet­ter part of half a cen­tu­ry. Below, we have assem­bled a selec­tion of Didion’s best essays online. We begin with one from Vogue:

“On Self Respect” (1961)

Didion’s 1979 essay col­lec­tion The White Album brought togeth­er some of her most tren­chant and search­ing essays about her immer­sion in the coun­ter­cul­ture, and the ide­o­log­i­cal fault lines of the late six­ties and sev­en­ties. The title essay begins with a gem­like sen­tence that became the title of a col­lec­tion of her first sev­en vol­umes of non­fic­tion: “We tell our­selves sto­ries in order to live.” Read two essays from that col­lec­tion below:

“The Women’s Move­ment” (1972)

“Holy Water” (1977)

Did­ion has main­tained a vig­or­ous pres­ence at the New York Review of Books since the late sev­en­ties, writ­ing pri­mar­i­ly on pol­i­tics. Below are a few of her best known pieces for them:

“Insid­er Base­ball” (1988)

“Eye on the Prize” (1992)

“The Teach­ings of Speak­er Gin­grich” (1995)

“Fixed Opin­ions, or the Hinge of His­to­ry” (2003)

“Pol­i­tics in the New Nor­mal Amer­i­ca” (2004)

“The Case of There­sa Schi­a­vo” (2005)

“The Def­er­en­tial Spir­it” (2013)

“Cal­i­for­nia Notes” (2016)

Did­ion con­tin­ues to write with as much style and sen­si­tiv­i­ty as she did in her first col­lec­tion, her voice refined by a life­time of expe­ri­ence in self-exam­i­na­tion and pierc­ing crit­i­cal appraisal. She got her start at Vogue in the late fifties, and in 2011, she pub­lished an auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal essay there that returns to the theme of “yearn­ing for a glam­orous, grown up life” that she explored in “Good­bye to All That.” In “Sable and Dark Glass­es,” Didion’s gaze is stead­ier, her focus this time not on the naïve young woman tem­pered and hard­ened by New York, but on her­self as a child “deter­mined to bypass child­hood” and emerge as a poised, self-con­fi­dent 24-year old sophisticate—the per­fect New York­er she nev­er became.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Joan Did­ion Reads From New Mem­oir, Blue Nights, in Short Film Direct­ed by Grif­fin Dunne

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

10 Free Sto­ries by George Saun­ders, Author of Tenth of Decem­ber, “The Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

Read 18 Short Sto­ries From Nobel Prize-Win­ning Writer Alice Munro Free Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Image  via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Most read­ers know Hunter S. Thomp­son for his 1971 book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Sav­age Jour­ney to the Heart of the Amer­i­can Dream. But in over 45 years of writ­ing, this pro­lif­ic observ­er of the Amer­i­can scene wrote volu­mi­nous­ly, often hilar­i­ous­ly, and usu­al­ly with decep­tive­ly clear-eyed vit­ri­ol on sports, pol­i­tics, media, and oth­er vicious­ly addic­tive pur­suits. (“I hate to advo­cate drugs, alco­hol, vio­lence, or insan­i­ty to any­one,” he famous­ly said, “but they’ve always worked for me.”) His dis­tinc­tive style, often imi­tat­ed but nev­er repli­cat­ed, all but forced the coin­ing of the term “gonzo” jour­nal­ism. But what could define it? One clue comes in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas itself, when Thomp­son reflects on his expe­ri­ence in the city, osten­si­bly as a reporter: “What was the sto­ry? Nobody had both­ered to say. So we would have to drum it up on our own. Free Enter­prise. The Amer­i­can Dream. Hor­a­tio Alger gone mad on drugs in Las Vegas. Do it now: pure Gonzo jour­nal­ism.”

You’ll find out more in the Paris Review’s inter­view with Thomp­son, in which he recounts once feel­ing that “jour­nal­ism was just a tick­et to ride out, that I was basi­cal­ly meant for high­er things. Nov­els.” Sit­ting down to begin his prop­er lit­er­ary career, Thomp­son took a quick job writ­ing up the Hel­l’s Angels, which let him get over “the idea that jour­nal­ism was a low­er call­ing. Jour­nal­ism is fun because it offers imme­di­ate work. You get hired and at least you can cov­er the f&cking City Hall. It’s excit­ing.” And then came the real epiphany, after he went to cov­er the Ken­tucky Der­by for Scan­lan’s: “Most depress­ing days of my life. I’d lie in my tub at the Roy­al­ton. I thought I had failed com­plete­ly as a jour­nal­ist. Final­ly, in des­per­a­tion and embar­rass­ment, I began to rip the pages out of my note­book and give them to a copy­boy to take to a fax machine down the street. When I left I was a bro­ken man, failed total­ly, and con­vinced I’d be exposed when the stuff came out.”

Indeed, the expo­sure came, but not in the way he expect­ed. Below, we’ve col­lect­ed ten of Thomp­son’s arti­cles freely avail­able online, from those ear­ly pieces on the Hel­l’s Angels and the Ken­tucky Der­by to oth­ers on the 1972 Pres­i­den­tial race, the Hon­olu­lu Marathon, Richard Nixon, and wee-hour con­ver­sa­tions with Bill Mur­ray. But don’t take these sub­jects too lit­er­al­ly; Thomp­son always had a way of find­ing some­thing even more inter­est­ing in exact­ly the oppo­site direc­tion from what­ev­er he’d ini­tial­ly meant to write about. And that, per­haps, reveals more about the gonzo method than any­thing else.

“The Motor­cy­cle Gangs: Losers and Out­siders” (The Nation, 1965) The arti­cle that would become the basis for Thomp­son’s first book, Hel­l’s Angels: The Strange and Ter­ri­ble Saga of the Out­law Motor­cy­cle Gangs. “When you get in an argu­ment with a group of out­law motor­cy­clists, you can gen­er­al­ly count your chances of emerg­ing unmaimed by the num­ber of heavy-hand­ed allies you can muster in the time it takes to smash a beer bot­tle. In this league, sports­man­ship is for old lib­er­als and young fools.”

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Rolling Stone, 1971) The Gonzo jour­nal­ism clas­sic first appeared as a two-part series in Rolling Stone mag­a­zine in Novem­ber 1971, com­plete with illus­tra­tions from Ralph Stead­man, before being pub­lished as a book in 1972.  Rolling Stone has post­ed the orig­i­nal ver­sion on its web site.

“Fear and Loathing on the Cam­paign Trail in ’72″ (Rolling Stone, 1973) Excerpts from Thomp­son’s book of near­ly the same name, an exam­i­na­tion of Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty can­di­date George McGov­ern’s unsuc­cess­ful bid for the Pres­i­den­cy that McGov­ern’s cam­paign man­ag­er Frank Mankiewicz called “the least fac­tu­al, most accu­rate account” in print. “My own the­o­ry, which sounds like mad­ness, is that McGov­ern would have been bet­ter off run­ning against Nixon with the same kind of neo-‘radical’ cam­paign he ran in the pri­maries. Not rad­i­cal in the left/right sense, but rad­i­cal in a sense that he was com­ing on with a new… a dif­fer­ent type of politi­cian… a per­son who actu­al­ly would grab the sys­tem by the ears and shake it.”

“The Curse of Lono” (Play­boy, 1983) Thomp­son and Stead­man’s assign­ment from Run­ning mag­a­zine to cov­er the Hon­ololu marathon turns into a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly “ter­ri­ble mis­ad­ven­ture,” this one even involv­ing the old Hawai­ian gods. “It was not easy for me, either, to accept the fact that I was born 1700 years ago in an ocean-going canoe some­where off the Kona Coast of Hawaii, a prince of roy­al Poly­ne­sian blood, and lived my first life as King Lono, ruler of all the islands, god of excess, unde­feat­ed box­er. How’s that for roots?”

“He Was a Crook” (Rolling Stone, 1994) Thomp­son’s obit­u­ary of, and per­son­al his­to­ry of his hatred for, Pres­i­dent Richard M. Nixon. “Some peo­ple will say that words like scum and rot­ten are wrong for Objec­tive Jour­nal­ism — which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objec­tive rules and dog­ma that allowed Nixon to slith­er into the White House in the first place.

“Doomed Love at the Taco Stand” (Time, 2001) Thomp­son’s adven­tures in Cal­i­for­nia, to which he has returned for the pro­duc­tion of Ter­ry Gilliam’s film adap­ta­tion of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas star­ring John­ny Depp. “I had to set­tle for half of Dep­p’s trail­er, along with his C4 Porsche and his wig, so I could look more like myself when I drove around Bev­er­ly Hills and stared at peo­ple when we rolled to a halt at stop­lights on Rodeo Dri­ve.”

“Fear & Loathing in Amer­i­ca” (ESPN.com, 2001) In the imme­di­ate after­math of 9/11, Thomp­son looks out onto the grim and para­noid future he sees ahead. “This is going to be a very expen­sive war, and Vic­to­ry is not guar­an­teed — for any­one, and cer­tain­ly not for any­one as baf­fled as George W. Bush.”

“Pris­on­er of Den­ver” (Van­i­ty Fair, 2004) A chron­i­cle of Thomp­son’s (posthu­mous­ly suc­cess­ful) involve­ment in the case of Lisl Auman, a young woman he believed wrong­ful­ly impris­oned for the mur­der of a police offi­cer. “ ‘We’ is the most pow­er­ful word in pol­i­tics. Today it’s Lisl Auman, but tomor­row it could be you, me, us.”

“Shot­gun Golf with Bill Mur­ray” (ESPN.com, 2005) Thomp­son’s final piece of writ­ing, in which he runs an idea for a new sport —com­bin­ing golf, Japan­ese mul­ti­sto­ry dri­ving ranges, and the dis­charg­ing of shot­guns — by the com­e­dy leg­end at 3:30 in the morn­ing. “It was Bill Mur­ray who taught me how to mor­ti­fy your oppo­nents in any sport­ing con­test, hon­est or oth­er­wise. He taught me my humil­i­at­ing PGA fade­away shot, which has earned me a lot of mon­ey… after that, I taught him how to swim, and then I intro­duced him to the shoot­ing arts, and now he wins every­thing he touch­es.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thompson’s Har­row­ing, Chem­i­cal-Filled Dai­ly Rou­tine

Hunter S. Thomp­son Calls Tech Sup­port, Unleash­es a Tirade Full of Fear and Loathing (NSFW)

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son (NSFW)

Hunter S. Thomp­son Remem­bers Jim­my Carter’s Cap­ti­vat­ing Bob Dylan Speech (1974)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.