JOAN DIDION WE TELL OURSELVES STORIES IN ORDER TO LIVE COLLECTED NONFICTION WITH AN INTRODUCTION EVERYMAN?’S LIBRARYSs gxb 13 3 ‘THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF o3 First included in Everyman’s Library, 2006 Introduction Copyright © 2006 by John Leonard 0 Dighibliography and Chronology Copyright © 2006 by Everyman's Library ‘Typography by Peter B, Willberg, Slouching Towards Betblebem Copyright © 1961, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968 by Joan Didion Originally published in 1968 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux The White Album Copyright © 1979 by Joan Didion Originally published in 1979 by Simon & Schuster Saltador Copyright © 1983 by Joan Didion Originally published in 1983 by Simon & Schuster 4 b Miami Copyright © 1987 by Joan Didion 1-4 ® \ £3 Originally published in 1987 by Simon & Schuster After Henry Copyright ©1992 by Joan Didion Originally published in 1992 by Simon & Schuster Political Fictions Copytight © 2001 by Joan Didion Originally published in 2001 by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Where I Was From Copyright (c) 2003 by Joan Didion Originally published in 2003 by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division ‘of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York. ‘www.randomhouse.com/everymans ISBN 0-307-26487-4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Didion, Joan We tell ourselves stories in ordet to live: the collected nonfiction / Joan Didion. em.—(Everyman’ library) Includes bibliographical references. Contents: Slouching towards Bethlehern ~The white album — Salvador — Miami — After Henry — Political fictions ~ Where I was from. ISBN 0-307-26487-4 (alk. paper) 1. Tide. PS3554.153W3 2006 2006041045 814) 54—deaa cp Book design by Barbara de Wilde and Carol Devine Printed and bound in Germany by GGP Media GmbH, Passneck sonWHERE THE KISSING NEVER STOPS OUTSIDE THE MONTEREY county courthouse in Salinas, California, the Downtown Merchants’ Christmas decorations glittered in the thin sunlight that makes the winter lettuce grow. Inside, the crowd blinked uneasily in the blinding television lights. The occasion was a meeting of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors, and the issue, on this warm afternoon before Christmas 1965, was whether or not a small school in the Carmel Valley, the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence, owned by Miss Joan Baez, was in violation of Section 32-C of the Monterey County Zoning Code, which prohibits land use “detrimental to the peace, morals, or general welfare of Monterey County.” Mrs, Gerald Petkuss, who lived across the road from the school, had put the problem another way. “We wonder what kind of people would go to a school like this,” she asked quite early in the controversy. “Why they aren’t out working and making money.” Mrs. Petkuss was a plump young matron with an air of bewildered determination, and she came to the rostrum in a strawberry-pink knit dress to say that she had been plagued “by people associated with Miss Baez’s school coming up to ask where it was although they knew perfectly well where it was— one gentleman I remember had a beard.” “Well I don’t care,” Mrs, Petkuss cried when someone in the front row giggled.“‘I have three small children, that’s a big respon- sibility, and I don't like to have to worry about...” Mrs. Petkuss paused delicately. “About who's around.” The hearing lasted from two until 7:15 p.m., five hours and fifteen minutes of participatory democracy during which it was suggested, on the one hand, that the Monterey County Board of Supervisors was turning our country into Nazi Germany, and, on the other, that the presence of Miss Baez and her fifteen students in the Carmel Valley would lead to “Berkeley-type” demonstrations, demoralize trainees at Fort Ord, paralyze Army =