A wallflower of a narrator in the majority of The White Album, Joan Didion separates herself from the woodwork in “Good Citizens” long enough to take a critical look at the Jaycees, a youth leadership group established in 1920. Didion insinuates that the Sixties bred and encouraged youthfulness by stating that the men surrounding her must have skipped the era entirely, refusing to leave the 20s behind. As her language becomes more revealing of her physical presence in the story, Didion’s sarcasm drips off of the page and into the lap of her reader where she suddenly seems sympathetic to the apathetic men.
At first I thought I had walked out of the rain into a time warp: the Sixties seemed not to have happened. All these Jaycees were, by definition, between 21 and 35 years old, but there was a disquieting tendency among them to have settled foursquare into middle age. There was the heavy jocularity, the baroque rhetoric of another generation entirely, a kind poignant attempt to circumnavigate social conventions that had in fact broken down in the Twenties. Wives were lovely and forbearing. Getting together for drinks was having a cocktail reception. Rain was liquid sunshine and the choice of a table for dinner was making an executive decision. They knew that this was a brave new world and they said so. It was a time to “put brotherhood into action,” to “open our neighborhoods to those of all colors.” It was time to “turn attention to the cities,” to think about youth centers and clinics and the example set by a black policeman-preacher in Philadelphia who was organizing a decency rally patterned after Miami’s. It was time to “decry apathy.”
The word “apathy” cropped up again and again, an odd word to use in relation to the past few years, and it was a while before I realized what it meant. It was not simply a word remembered from the Fifties, when most of these men had frozen their vocabularies: it was a word meant to indicate that not enough of “our kind” were speaking out. It was a cry in the wilderness, and this resolute determination to meet 1950 head-on was a kind of refuge. Here were people who had been led to believe that the future was always a rational extension of the past, that there would ever be world enough and time for “turning attention,” for “problems” and “solutions.” Of course they would not admit their inchoate fears that the world was not that way any more. Of course they would not join the “fashionable doubters.” Of course they would ignore the “pessimistic pundits.” Late one afternoon I sat in the Miramar lobby, watching the rain fall and the steam rise off the heated pool outside and listening to a couple of Jaycees discussing student unrest and whether the “solution” might not lie in on-campus Jaycee groups. I thought about this astonishing notion for a long time. It occurred to me finally that I was listening to a true underground, to the voice of all those who have felt themselves not merely shocked but personally betrayed by recent history. It was supposed to have been their time. It was not.
Questions
1. Despite the quotations, does Didion include herself in the group she criticizes when she says “our kind,” or does she intend to separate herself from the Jaycees?
2. How does Didion’s use of concrete language like “rain was liquid sunshine” alter the reader’s perception of the Jaycees? Does she give them any ownership over their elderly actions and attitudes? Are the Jaycees a product of an inflexible environment? Is Didion sympathetic toward the Jaycees?
3. Why does Didion include the few sentences about sitting in the Miramar lobby? What does her inclusion of these details about pool and steam do to her harshness about the Jaycees?
4. Within the two paragraphs, Didion switches from an ambiguous feeling of stepping into a “time warp” to the decisive language of the last three sentences. Which attitude flows more seamlessly with the rest of The White Album? Does either make Didion seem unreliable as a narrator?
12 September 2007