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Toward Bethlehem with Joan Didion and Jill Abramson
NY Times Scribe Graphically Exposes Affair-Having Friend
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BookishLookish
07/28/09

In reply to Toward Bethlehem with Joan Didion and Jill Abramson
Also, judging from that photo, it looks like Jill and Joan could be twins.
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kneetoe
07/28/09

In reply to Toward Bethlehem with Joan Didion and Jill Abramson
The real poetry here is the shift from "Towards" to "Toward." Genius!
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BookishLookish
07/28/09

@kneetoe: This is a debate that will not end. Toward? Towards? Stop the madness! But the Yeats original text is "towards," so did Didion pick that up, and now some anal-retentive/pedantic copyeditor at the NYT has Americanized it to "toward," thus defeating the riff. Ack!
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Edited by BookishLookish at 07/28/09 3:26 PM BookishLookish was starred BookishLookish was unstarred

Paul.B.Dodd
07/28/09

In reply to Toward Bethlehem with Joan Didion and Jill Abramson
I want a puppy but I'm afraid my cat won't accept the puppy and she will wreck havoc in our humble abode.
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snugbug
07/28/09

In reply to Toward Bethlehem with Joan Didion and Jill Abramson
Wow. Jill Abramson sure has my personal number and knows how to bring out the Stalin-gothic censoring b*tch inside of me. Congrats! Under most any other similar circumstances I'd be fluttering the 1st Amendment flag up in support, but this grave-dancer lady makes me want to muzzle her. Or muffle her.
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BookishLookish
07/28/09

In reply to Toward Bethlehem with Joan Didion and Jill Abramson
Play With It While It Lays
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Jasper Reardon
07/28/09

@BookishLookish: The Bite Album
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Rozelle’s Bagman
07/28/09

In reply to Toward Bethlehem with Joan Didion and Jill Abramson
Tune in next week for "Notes on Chomp"
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Yahtzii
07/28/09

In reply to Toward Bethlehem with Joan Didion and Jill Abramson
It's a puppy. There are zillions of them. People adopt and begin raising puppies literally every day. I got a 7-week-old puppy in November and did it myself. It just smacks of egotism to have an entire column and a possible book deal about this, much less one in which you invite yourself to be compared to Joan Didion. Maybe if she was raising a puppy in an underground bunker in a post-apocalyptic New York I'd be interested.
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Paul.B.Dodd promoted this comment Edited by Yahtzii at 07/28/09 2:44 PM Yahtzii was starred Yahtzii was unstarred

secretagentman
07/28/09

In reply to Toward Bethlehem with Joan Didion and Jill Abramson
I'm sorry, but that puppy is sooooo adorable. I want one right now.
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goetz
07/28/09

@secretagentman: Apology accepted.
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Nice Beaver
07/28/09

In reply to Toward Bethlehem with Joan Didion and Jill Abramson
You'll all feel silly when she hits us with the next installment, Yelping in Sodom, detailing Scout's ritualistic punishment.
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Edited by Nice Beaver at 07/28/09 2:33 PM Nice Beaver was starred Nice Beaver was unstarred

andBegorrah
07/28/09

@Nice Beaver: The Year of Magical Tinkling will be a profound memoir of house training and disenchantment.
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iplaudius
07/28/09

In reply to Toward Bethlehem with Joan Didion and Jill Abramson
Of course, there are those who would consider Didion’s appropriation a fatuous not to say pretentious flattening of the Yeats.
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friendslikeJimRome
07/28/09

@iplaudius: Niles Crane, is that you?
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iplaudius
07/28/09

@friendslikeJimRome: There are times when "iplaudius" reads a lot like Niles Crane.

I think Didion’s reputation is inflated.

"Look, I’m writing a journalistic essay about popular culture, but don’t worry, I read things like Yeats."
"This essay is for people who know Yeats."
"I need gravitas. But it has to be perceptible to people who just passed Great Books. Let’s grab the ‘The Second Coming.’"
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Edited by iplaudius at 07/28/09 3:10 PM iplaudius was starred iplaudius was unstarred

shostakobitch
07/28/09

@iplaudius:maybe her editor bullied her into it. maybe she wanted to call it "fuck hippies, i did."
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Baroness
07/28/09

@iplaudius:

I hear you, but have you read the essay? In her gloomy way, she's right there amidst the revelry of the fabled counterculture, and rather latching onto the negative aspects she sees. It's a fleeting world she's documenting. And I think the Yeats poem isn't that inappropriate:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

It's very much her own dark take on what she's seeing. Fun gal! But I suppose playing the Cassandra while the hippies frolic appealed to her educated Eastern readership when it was published, I can see why the tone and mood-of a lot of Didion's writing- might not appeal to everyone. But she's hardly the first or last writer to take a classical or poetic quote or allusion. And she's all about gravitas, she is essentially humorless. But I suppose to certain intellectuals, that's catnip, "seriousness" exalted. I do admire Didion, but there's a persistent depressive tendency to her- I can understand why some aren't into her work.
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BookishLookish
07/28/09

@shostakobitch: God, I love you. When are we getting married anyway?
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iplaudius
07/28/09

@Baroness: I am a sucker for a coherent, well-argued rebuttal. You win; I love you.
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shostakobitch
07/28/09

@BookishLookish: now you've got me all a-titter and blushing. some day soon, let us hope.
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City_Dater
07/28/09

In reply to Toward Bethlehem with Joan Didion and Jill Abramson
And both their first names begin with J, so clearly she's onto something at least as compelling and profound as GOODBYE TO ALL THAT with this doggie diary.

"Scout" is such a trite name choice, by the way. But there you go...
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Trulymadlyme
07/28/09

In reply to Toward Bethlehem with Joan Didion and Jill Abramson
Wow. That's horrible. Like. Seriously --

Horrible.
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interpretedworld
07/28/09

In reply to Toward Bethlehem with Joan Didion and Jill Abramson
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last/Chews toward Bethlehem to be born?

Mm. No, not quite.

Perhaps if you gave that "chews" a second syllable, like so: "Chewés toward Bethlehem"--that's better. Still, since chewing creates no forward motion...it still makes no sense.

Abramson's just throwing that reference in there for "hey! I know about a book!" points. I would wager that "[][ing/es] Toward Bethlehem" is abused almost as much as Proust's madeleine in the NYT.
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Gabriel Snyder promoted this comment Edited by interpretedworld at 07/28/09 2:25 PM interpretedworld was starred interpretedworld was unstarred

Forgetitjake
07/13/09

In reply to NY Times Scribe Graphically Exposes Affair-Having Friend
This post is a fake gotcha. The headline calls the journalist out for "expose[ing] affair-having friend" and so I clicked through. But nobody is exposed. Or maybe it's assumed we all possess a list of all the men and women Virginia H had lunch with "not long ago" and that we can confidently cross off all but one name.

On the other hand -- supercilious Joan Didion quote! QED! Something is proven! Don't know what!
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BookishLookish
07/13/09

In reply to NY Times Scribe Graphically Exposes Affair-Having Friend
Yes. Writers are whores and will pimp your story out to the highest or lowest bidder. But if you are having an affair and you confide in a writer and expect them not to write about it, you should just go sit in the corner wearing a funny hat. Lesson: everyone STFU.
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