Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Each of these essays is a portrait of a piece of American culture that Didion sees as somehow emblematic or definitive of the United States (and particularly California and its satellite communities) in the 60s. In each, Didion is concerned with the essential ironies of American life, the disconnect between what we say we believe and what our actions and obsessions make clear.

The Comrade Laski Didion writes about is a minor figure who headed up a splinter group of the Communist Party USA. Laski’s organization sided with China during the rift between the Soviets and China that took place in the 60s, and his beliefs were considered radical even for Communists in America during a time when that designation was de facto un-American. What Didion finds compelling about Laski is the degree of self-serious importance he finds through his political beliefs; Didion attributes this to a dread which is not unlike the anxiety and illness that she often mentions in her work (and is a deliberate part of her persona; Didion centers herself often in this book as an active observer of her subject). Laski’s response to this dread is to fill his life up with meaning through the imposition of belief, threats, and systems, or “an immutably ordered world in which things mattered” (65). For Didion, a recurring theme is the humanization of outsiders, and few people in the 1960s were more on the outside than someone like Michael Laski.

Howard Hughes is an outsider at the opposite end of the socio-political spectrum. There are few more successful businessmen in American history. Hughes is most known for his erratic, agoraphobic behavior later in his life; the rumors around him, with varying degrees of credibility, have cast him as a kind of folk hero, a twisted yet mythic embodiment of American principles. Didion analyzes this myth-making, saying that the enduring fascination of Howard Hughes over more altruistic figures is rooted in the desire Americans have for personal freedom; Didion equates Hughes’ money with his freedom to be strange and demanding. Hughes, then, is a kind of American id, divorced of the need to worry about what others think of him. This, Didion concludes, is his appeal.

“California Dreaming” sees Didion taking aim at what, for her, seems like a soft target: the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. The center had several influential fellows (Bishop James Pike, for example, was a radical thinker in the Episcopal church who advanced many progressive ideas well before their common acceptance), but Didion ultimately portrays it as a vanity project that caters to those who would rather be flattered than challenged. She employs irony and juxtaposition, such as when she is warned that the conversation at the big table is “pretty high-powered” before portraying two men talking in banal platitudes about violence, or when she quotes Jack Lemmon and Paul Newman even though a Supreme Court Justice is sitting at the table (75). Didion’s criticism is ultimately fairly light; she sees the Center as essentially harmless, a way for rich people to feel good about themselves. It only becomes pointed in light of the Center’s outer projection of seriousness and import.

“Marrying Absurd” is a piece of slice-of-life journalism that hopes to understand the appeal of Las Vegas weddings; what Didion finds in her experiences there is a guilelessness in the people who participate in them, which is in contrast to the popular image of Vegas weddings as cheap mistakes. She connects the absurdity of the wedding industry to Vegas’s own absurdity; it is a town built in defiance of the land. For Didion, though, this incongruity gives way to a deeper sadness—the people she encounters are far more sincere than one might expect, and her ultimate conclusion is that a more expensive, authentic wedding is out of reach for these people, so they have found meaning in the simulacrum.