The White Album by Joan Didion

       For Joan Didion, the 1960s was a decade of realization.  In her essay The White Album, she reminisces on some of her most unforgettable occurrences.  Through her collection of memories from the time period, she explains how she came to see that life is just a series of random events.  Whether it be attending a recording session for The Doors or discussing political rights with young members of the Black Panthers, Didion is certain that none of it was meant to have meaning.
      Being a literary journalist, Joan Didion only sees herself documenting and reporting the truth.  In her 1968 psychiatric report, results read that she has a "fundamentally pessimistic, fatalistic, and depressive view of the world around her" (Didion 423).  The difference between Didion and a narrative story writer is that she does not write to convey a message; she allows the story she is reporting to do that for her.  Throughout The White Album, Didion shares her most notable moments through the rhetoric of small anecdotes she has from the 60s.  She uses these incidents to argue that there is no such thing as destiny.  Using her memory of John Kennedy's death and how she happened to be silk dress shopping, Didion explains her thought that "all connections were equally meaningful, and equally senseless" (Didion 444).  While most authors link events together to display meaning, she breaks them apart with the brutal honesty that there is no connection.  Instead of looking too far into things, she remains on the surface of meaning, taking things the way they come.
     Written for people who experienced the 60s the same way, differently, or others from a different generation, the point of The White Album is applicable to anybody at any time period.  Her message that we lie to ourselves to make sense of things is relevant constantly; 1960s or 2015.
      Reading through her personal anecdotes caused mixed emotions for me while reading.  She recounts, in detail, so many of these seemingly-significant events from a breakthrough era in her life only to then question whether any of it actually means something.  It wasn't until after reading that I had realized none of it mattered; "it was another story without a narrative" (Didion 445).  Joan Didion successfully expressed her message not only through her experiences, but by making the reader feel a sense of disappointment after realizing there is no point.
    

Surface Meaning vs. Deeper Meaning
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