California Dreaming
Many of the pieces in the collection are set in Didion's home state of California. As a multi-generation Californian, Didion has a unique and ingrained conception of the landscape, dating back to the arrival of the Donner Party. On one hand, Didion portrays California as a fertile, Eden-like setting. Yet amidst the paradise, Didion also finds social chaos and disorder. There is the murderous affair of Lucille Miller, and the apocalyptic, drug-addled wasteland of the Haight Ashbury. In this sense, California is employed as a literary device to highlight both the American Dream in action, but also the fractured social landscape of mid-century America.
Haight-Ashbury Hippies
The titular story of the collection is centered around the counterculture movement in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco before the Summer of Love in 1967. Didion meets children who have flocked from all over the country to participate in the drug-consuming, free-loving Hippy culture. Yet Didion is skeptical. She is horrified by the overconsumption, the absence of responsibility, especially in the case of Susan, a 4 year old child who routinely takes acid provided by her mother. To make sense of the scene, Didion references the W.B. Yeats' poem, "The Second Coming," saying, "the center cannot hold." In this sense, the Hippie movement of the Haight-Ashbury is a very visible example of the divided social paradigm in Post-War America. What began as a Summer of Love would end with 1968 riots in Chicago, the re-election of Richard Nixon, and the Manson Murders.
The Weather
Didion pays keen attention to the climatic surroundings of her stories. Most notably, she describes the Santa Ana winds and their effect on the people of Los Angeles. When the wind arrives, Didion writes, "the baby frets. The maid sulks. I rekindle' a waning argument with the telephone company, then cut my losses and lie down, given over to whatever it is in the air." The warm winds often result in forest fires which ravage Southern California. In describing the weather as such, Didion gestures towards the way in which one is intrinsically tied to the land they inhabit, and the powerlessness humanity has over the forces of nature.
John Wayne
In "John Wayne: A Love Song," Didion recounts the ways in which the legendary Western film actor influenced her conceptions of love and masculinity. She remembers watching a Wayne movie as a young child, and being incensed by the handsome, cavalier character. Wayne also appears as a figure in other stories throughout the collection. In this sense, he becomes more an icon or symbol than a simple man. He is the archetype of masculinity of strength. Yet as Didion meets him in 1965, he is aging and battling cancer. She is forced to confront her childhood conceptions of the man standing before her, and as she realizes, one can never measure up to the image that is created around them.
