The White Album

Content Warning: The source text contains a discussion of sexual assault.

Didion opens this essay with a declaration: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live” (8). To illustrate how people can impose a narrative on any situation, she speculates on the possible stories of a naked woman on a window ledge: Maybe she’s using drugs, doing something objectionable, or engaging in a political protest. Didion notes that after publishing two books, working on movies, raising a daughter, and earning a Los Angeles Times “Woman of the Year” honor in 1968, she’s unsure about storytelling.

In Hawaii, Didion watches Robert Kennedy’s funeral and coverage of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. In addition to reading George Orwell, she reads a newspaper article about a mother named Betty Lansdown Fouquet, who left her daughter in the middle of the highway to die. These bleak events precede a psychiatric evaluation of Didion that describes her as pessimistic, which Didion connects to her vertigo and nausea.

Didion and her family rent a large, dilapidated home in Hollywood not far from where brothers Paul Robert Ferguson and Thomas Scott Ferguson killed silent film actor Ramon Novarro. The Ferguson brothers were strangers to Novarro, and myriad strangers stop by Didion’s home and sometimes stay overnight.