The White Album Summary and Analysis

The first essay in the book of the same name by reporter and writer Joan Didion acts as a frontispiece, introduction and also a summary of her works here; all centred around the main theme of American social life during the Sixties and Seventies. This essay serves as an introduction to Joan Didion the person and her interior, mental life during the time as well as featuring some of the incidences that she was heavily involved in reporting (the prosecution of the Charles Manson Murders, the interviews with Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panthers, the student campus uprisings).

The essay begins with Didion reflecting on what 'stories' are; whether we are talking about 'the News' or the personal stories of someone's life, or indeed fiction. Didion makes the assertion that;

"We tell ourselves stories in order to...