“My Hands on the Turbine”: Joan Didion, Water, and Control
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13136/2281-4582/2022.i19.1163Keywords:
Joan Didion, water, control, The White Album, Where I Was FromAbstract
Water – California water – is a recurring presence in Joan Didion’s work, both her fiction and nonfiction; it is, indeed, an “obsession. In this article I argue that water control – as epitomized by the Hoover Dam and California water history – has its counterpart in control over writing, the total command of Didion’s obsessively honed prose. I do so by analyzing two essays of the 1970’s (“At the Dam”, “Holy Water”) and her 2003 memoir Where I Was From.References
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