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Leah Finnegan

01/13/15 04:04PM

Filed to: joan didion watch

"Joan Didion requires very little explanation to a very large group of people, representing a class of consumers who tend to be young, female, upper middle class, white, and somewhat inwardly tortured." A nice essay on Joananism, via The Awl.

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araucaniad Leah Finnegan 01/13/15 07:43PM

I don't think this essay is actually bad. It's just a very good look inside the mind of a person who would have been very happy as a society lady in the salons of pre-Revolutionary France. The line about the picture of her manicure and the Sontag book made me think of any of the supporting characters in the 1996 movie "Ridicule".

MurcanOfConstantSorrow araucaniad 01/14/15 01:35PM

I disagree with your first statement quite strongly and I agree with everything else you said. I haven't seen Ridicule? Do you recommend? What's it about?

araucaniad MurcanOfConstantSorrow 01/18/15 11:10PM

Ridicule is great. It's about pre-Revolutionary France.

MurcanOfConstantSorrow araucaniad 01/19/15 02:12AM

Oh interesting. What is it about this type of woman that makes you think of the upper classes in pre-Revolutionary France?

MurcanOfConstantSorrow Leah Finnegan 01/13/15 07:17PM

I'm sorry but I cannot stand to read more endless reams of words from a young American liberal arts graduate who believes that because she is young, female, white, upper middle class, pretty and went to college, she actually writes pieces that have real quality and value.

It's not a nice essay, Leah. You believe that because you're in the bubble. To people outside of it, it's just more navel-gazing, self-involved, self-obsessed bullshit from the current crop of young, white, pretty, college-educated women who have decided that they are 'writers'. You can't be a real writer just because you decided to put some words to your precious little self-involvement.

Sharticles MurcanOfConstantSorrow 01/14/15 10:04AM

I would have gone with Joanism as a description, since Joananism sounds like the female version of Onanism...although that's really what a lot of this stuff is: intellectual masturbation. The essay isn't terrible and I don't blame the mentioned demographic for getting caught up in it. After all they started further up Maslow's hierarchy than I did. They have to fill their privileged hours with SOMETHING.

MurcanOfConstantSorrow Sharticles 01/14/15 01:34PM

Why are the women in this group given to this sort of melancholic affectation? It's like this rambling attack of dysthymia that they have to type out. How come the men of this socioeconomic class don't get these attacks of rambly, self-obsessed melancholia?