Title Essay
The title essay describes Didion's impressions of the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco during the neighborhood's heyday as a countercultural center. In contrast to the more utopian image of the milieu promoted by counterculture sympathizers then and now, Didion offered a rather grim portrayal of the goings-on, including an encounter with a pre-school age child who was given LSD by her parents.
In her preface to the book, Didion writes, "I went to San Francisco because I had not been able to work in some months, had been paralyzed by the conviction that writing was an irrelevant act, that the world as I had understood it no longer existed. If I was to work again at all, it would be necessary for me to come to terms with disorder."
Read more about this topic: Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Famous quotes containing the words title and/or essay:
“It was his title that killed me. I had never spoken to a lord before. Oh, me! what a fool, what a beast I have been!”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
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—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)