philoSophie

History, Theatre, Greek and Russian literature, Godard, Angelopoulos and Bergman's movies
 
Modern Greek philology student. | Kiss me in the rain but also revolt against the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment |https://instagram.com/ph1losophie/ |https://thesuspendedstep.wordpress.com
My goal in life is to read everything Dostoyevsky has ever written.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Slouching Towards Bethlehem - Joan Didion Η Joan Didion με δεινή πένα και υπηρετώντας το ιδανικό του "See enough and write it down" καταγράφει το σημείο που τέμνεται ο περιβάλλων χώρος και το ανθρώπινο μυαλό και περιγράφει με ζωντάνια και με σαφή αντίληψη της βαρύτητας της περιρρέουσας ατμόσφαιρας την Καλιφόρνια και τη Νέα Υόρκη, μεταξύ άλλων, της δεκαετίας του 1960, την ιδιομορφία των κοινωνικών καταστάσεων, τη προσωρινότητα και την αγάπη για μια πόλη, την πολωτική οικονομική πραγματικότητα, με την καταθλιπτική κι αδιέξοδη ατμόσφαιρα να διαπερνά τα κείμενά της.

Το ομότιτλο δοκίμιο έχει κατά τη γνώμη μου τη δύναμη του Howl του Ginsberg· πρόκειται για μια σκληρή εξέταση της κουλτούρας των χίπις της γειτονιάς του Σαν Φρανσίσκο που ξεκινάει με μια προμετωπίδα παρμένη από το The Second Coming του Yeats, ποίημα που ενέπνευσε άλλωστε και τον τίτλο του βιβλίου (And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?), και προσφέρει την πιο άμεση και μεστή αποτύπωση της οπτικής της Didion για τα θέματα που αναλύει στο εν λόγω βιβλίο:
The center was not holding. It was a country of bankruptcy notices and public-auction announcements and commonplace reports of casual killings and misplaced children and abandoned homes and vandals who misplaced even the four-letter words they scrawled. It was a country in which families routinely disappeared, trailing bad checks and repossession papers. Adolescents drifted from city to torn city, sloughing off both the past and the future as snakes shed their skins, children who were never taught and would never now learn the games that had held the society together. People were missing. Children were missing. Parents were missing. Those left behind filed desultory missing-persons reports, then moved on themselves. It was not a country in open revolution. It was not a country under enemy siege. It was the United States of America in the cold late spring of 1967, and the market was steady and the G. N. P high and a great many articulate people seemed to have a sense of high social purpose and it might have been a spring of brave hopes and national promise, but it was not, and more and more people had the uneasy apprehension that it was not.