ABSTRACT
The simultaneity of the beginning and ending of a history which accumulated and imploded in one single moment is how Joan Didion explains her approach to history, calling it characteristically Californian and thus making herself, yet again, the self-proclaimed speaker for the land. Didion’s speaker’s persistence in her presentation of a limited vision of California history allows her to study the state’s emergent conscience, albeit at the cost of melancholia. Didion’s speaker’s persistence in her presentation of a limited vision of California history allows her to study the state’s emergent conscience, albeit at the cost of melancholia. California is represented as a paradox: a cultivated garden, a corrupted Eden, an awe-inspiring desert. To borrow Ray Allen Billington’s phrase, California is the land of both savagery and promise; Didion’s fiction portrays the state in all its conflicted, melancholy beauty.
