Ryan Clark on Joan Didion's "Where I was from" in the Rumpus

The book, Didion says, "represents an exploration into my own confusions about the place and the way in which I grew up, confusions as much about America as about California, misapprehensions and misunderstandings so much a part of who I became that I can still to this day confront them only obliquely."
Didion questions the very stories Californians tell themselves -- the noble odysseys of their pioneer stock, and the vitality of today's entrepreneurs -- and deflates them, in a way that shows she both loves and is disappointed by the people who have inherited her home state. via