Shelfology Book Pairing

A Novel

by Joan Didion

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, "Play It As It Lays" captures the mood of an entire generation. Joan Didion chose Hollywood to serve as her microcosm of contemporary society and exposed a culture characterized by emptiness and ennui.

FSG 80th Anniversary Special Edition

by Joan Didion

The essential portrait of America in the sixties, by the acclaimed author of The Year of Magical Thinking. More than a half century after its publication in 1968, Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem remains an essential portrait of America—and California in particular—during the sixties. This collection, which was Didion’s nonfiction debut, is a bold announcement of one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era and includes pieces exploring such subjects as John Wayne and Howard Hughes; growing up in California; the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room; and San Francisco’s Haight–Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture. The power of Didion’s essays only grows over time, owing to her stature as “an articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time, a memorable voice, partly eulogistic, partly despairing; always in control” (The New York Times Book Review).