Essay: "The White Album." Joan Didion. 1979.

10-second review: The author tells about and reflects on her experiences in 1968, experiences with the Black Panthers and college takeovers. She summarizes by saying that another author had said he put his experiences in writing so he could find meaning in them, but she has put these experiences in writing and still finds no meaning in them. Reflects the mood of the times.

Quotes:

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”

“We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson….”

“The Doors’ music insisted that love was sex and sex was death and therein lay salvation.”

Huey Newton shows up at a hospital, shot and bleeding, and asks to see a doctor, but the admissions person would not take him to a doctor unless Newton signed an admission form and Newton said, “I don’t have to sign anything.”

“Playing it out in time for the six o’clock news.”

“It was another story without a narrative.”

Best American Essays of the Century. Editors: Oates and Atwan. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. 2000.