Joan Didion's writing style is constantly shifting in The White Album. At times her tone is very obvious, such as when she criticizes the Diamond Lane and Caltrans by deploying basic facts and statistics in the "Bureaucrats" essay. This essay is humorous, and exhibits a creative flair bit it is also very journalistic in tone compared to other pieces. At other times, it is more difficult to discern Didion's point of view on a topic. The reasons for the inclusion of the essay "In Bed" in the collection are more ambiguous. It's not clear if the story is meant to be more journalistic in purpose or more artistic, a gateway into how Didion perceives the migraines she suffers and how this perception factors into her writing in some way. Most of her essays contain a mixture of both informative intent and commentary on the art of writing. This juxtaposition of journalism and Didion's personal narrative occurs throughout The White Album and it is always difficult to evaluate between the two, as it is in "Many Mansions."
It is an altogether curious structure, this one-story one-million-four dream house of Ronald and Nancy Reagan's. Were the house on the market (which it will probably not be, since, at the time it was costing a million-four, local real estate agents seemed to agree on $300,000 as the top price ever paid for a house in Sacramento County), the words used to describe it would be "open" and "contemporary," although technically it is neither. "Flow" is a word that seems to crop up quite a bit when one is walking through the place and so is "resemble." The walls "resemble" local adobe, but they are not: they are the same concrete blocks, plastered and painted a stale yellow cream, used in so many supermarkets and housing projects and Coca-Cola bottling plants. The door frames and the exposed beams "resemble" native redwood, but they are not: they are construction-grade lumber of indeterminate quality, stained brown.
Questions
1. The terms Didion employs to discuss the house are typically empty words one often hears in the description of a house: contemporary, it resembles, flow. But these are also words that are often utilized in describing a piece of literature. Is Didion really concerned the house in this paragraph, or is there some underlying meaning about writing style? Is she criticizing the way we analyze literature by referencing such words? Or is she criticizing something else, such as the way we attach value to something?
2. Didion relies on repetition in discrediting the description of the house, emphasizing her "but they are not" commentary in sequential sentences. Why the identical repetition in these sentences? Could a different syntax or word choice have conveyed the same meaning?
3. What is the purpose behind the relationship between "one-million-four" and "$300,000?" Why does Didion use numbers to state $1.4 million and why doesn't she use a more colloquial term, such as "three hundred grand" when discussing the price?
4. Ronald Reagan was behind the construction of the house and her tone is critical of its existence. Politics are a recurring theme in the book and often critical, for example the Caltrans situation. How much weight do we put in this passage as a political commentary on Reagan? On California politics in general?
References
Didion, Joan. The White Album. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990.
11 September 2007