Narrative Control: How Stories Dominate Our Lives

Reviewing Alissa Wilkinson’s ‘We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine’

I never really read much Joan Didion until last year. She was a name I’d always heard, always known. How could you miss her? But I never felt drawn to her work. When it came to cultural observers, I gravitated toward satirists like P.J. O’Rourke, provocateurs like Camille Paglia, and flamboyant bomb-tossers like Tom Wolfe. That’s who spoke to me. Didion…