The Dream is Teaching the Dreamers How To Live
by Daniel Tucker
Review: “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream” originally published in The Saturday Evening Post (1966) and re-published in Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays by Joan Didion (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968)
by Daniel Tucker
Review: “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream” originally published in The Saturday Evening Post (1966) and re-published in Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays by Joan Didion (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968)
I cannot help but think that Joan Didion is the kind of writer who conceives of a phrase or sentence and then builds an entire essay and research project around those words. As if all of the work that goes into her essay, was done merely to support that original insight or epiphany.
In her essay “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream” Didion pursues such a project. I can picture her sitting in her fabulous home contemplating the world and coming to the conclusion that the cultural revolution that began after WW2 in the United States had somehow morphed from growth, development and progress to discipline, coercion and nastiness. She said to her self that “The dream is teaching the dreamers how to live”, it is not liberating us but it is shaping us. And then she took that sentence and she stored it away until she found precisely the right story in which to deploy it.
That story was the right fit for Didion were the events surrounding the murder trial of Lucille Miller who was suspected of killing her husband Gordon Miller late one evening in 1964 on a remote road near their home in the San Bernadino Valley of Southern California. The murder and the family had their intriguing moments but it was truly the San Bernadino Valley that was the subject of Didion’s vision of a failed dream. The dream of the valley was not different than many American Dreams of the past - it was of space, expansion. She describes the place as "...in certain ways an alien place: not the coastal California of the subtropical twilights and the soft westerlies of the Pacific but a harsher California, haunted by the Mojave just beyond the mountains, devastated by the hot dry Santa Ana wind that comes down through the passes at 100 miles an hour and works on the nerves.” The region grew massively after WW2, serving as bedroom communities for commuters to Los Angeles (it is known as part of Greater LA), but today the economy is more centralized in the valley. Known as the “Inland Empire”, it serves as one of the most important transportation hubs in the country, facilitating intermodal exchanges between cargo coming off the boats in LA and Long Beach and the rail and trucking networks that are located in the valley. Forbes Magazine recently ranked the area first in its list of America's most unhealthy commutes, as Inland area residents breathe the unhealthiest air and have the highest rate of fatal auto accidents per capita [Van Dusen, Alison (2007-11-26). "America's Unhealthy Commutes". Forbes Magazine.]
“California belongs to Joan Didion” wrote Michiko Kakutani in a 1979 article on Didion for the New York Times. From my vantage point, 33 years later, I cannot wholly confirm this. The dream of California’s past is so far in the past that it has been replaced by many more failed dreams. The pattern has become ingrained in the Golden State to such an extent that it is part of its charm and allure.
But as I imagine Didion sitting back in that fabulous home, thinking up sentences to capture trans-formative moments in American history, I am so appreciative for her critical insight. While California’s failed dreams may have their own particular regional flavor, the cautious words “The dream is teaching the dreamers how to live” apply to all of our dreams and the sometimes unintended or lives. consequences that accompany them. I cannot help but think of mobile technology and social networking, dreams which had promise of liberation but instead structure so much of how we live and think. Or I cannot help but think of political projects of the past, also promising liberation, but so frequently bringing along their own rationality and conformity. My main disagreement with Didion is that big dreams about better futures are not worth having because of the strong likelihood of failure. While we could always do a better job anticipating possible consequences of our dreams, isn’t fearing and avoiding those consequences by not having dreams a failure of the imagination?
In her essay “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream” Didion pursues such a project. I can picture her sitting in her fabulous home contemplating the world and coming to the conclusion that the cultural revolution that began after WW2 in the United States had somehow morphed from growth, development and progress to discipline, coercion and nastiness. She said to her self that “The dream is teaching the dreamers how to live”, it is not liberating us but it is shaping us. And then she took that sentence and she stored it away until she found precisely the right story in which to deploy it.
That story was the right fit for Didion were the events surrounding the murder trial of Lucille Miller who was suspected of killing her husband Gordon Miller late one evening in 1964 on a remote road near their home in the San Bernadino Valley of Southern California. The murder and the family had their intriguing moments but it was truly the San Bernadino Valley that was the subject of Didion’s vision of a failed dream. The dream of the valley was not different than many American Dreams of the past - it was of space, expansion. She describes the place as "...in certain ways an alien place: not the coastal California of the subtropical twilights and the soft westerlies of the Pacific but a harsher California, haunted by the Mojave just beyond the mountains, devastated by the hot dry Santa Ana wind that comes down through the passes at 100 miles an hour and works on the nerves.” The region grew massively after WW2, serving as bedroom communities for commuters to Los Angeles (it is known as part of Greater LA), but today the economy is more centralized in the valley. Known as the “Inland Empire”, it serves as one of the most important transportation hubs in the country, facilitating intermodal exchanges between cargo coming off the boats in LA and Long Beach and the rail and trucking networks that are located in the valley. Forbes Magazine recently ranked the area first in its list of America's most unhealthy commutes, as Inland area residents breathe the unhealthiest air and have the highest rate of fatal auto accidents per capita [Van Dusen, Alison (2007-11-26). "America's Unhealthy Commutes". Forbes Magazine.]
“California belongs to Joan Didion” wrote Michiko Kakutani in a 1979 article on Didion for the New York Times. From my vantage point, 33 years later, I cannot wholly confirm this. The dream of California’s past is so far in the past that it has been replaced by many more failed dreams. The pattern has become ingrained in the Golden State to such an extent that it is part of its charm and allure.
But as I imagine Didion sitting back in that fabulous home, thinking up sentences to capture trans-formative moments in American history, I am so appreciative for her critical insight. While California’s failed dreams may have their own particular regional flavor, the cautious words “The dream is teaching the dreamers how to live” apply to all of our dreams and the sometimes unintended or lives. consequences that accompany them. I cannot help but think of mobile technology and social networking, dreams which had promise of liberation but instead structure so much of how we live and think. Or I cannot help but think of political projects of the past, also promising liberation, but so frequently bringing along their own rationality and conformity. My main disagreement with Didion is that big dreams about better futures are not worth having because of the strong likelihood of failure. While we could always do a better job anticipating possible consequences of our dreams, isn’t fearing and avoiding those consequences by not having dreams a failure of the imagination?
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