Admirers of Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion's first collection of essays, will recognize at once her skewed, wry world, which often resembles the setting for a story by Donald Barthelme. The White Album, her second collection, is a kind of battle report from the '60s—brief notes from someone who manages to be an outsider, observing dispassionately, even when she is wounded in the crossfire. (p. C1)

Unease, foreboding and even terror color Joan Didion's perceptions of the '60s, but something cool and still in her voice prevents The White Album from being too disturbing to read. It's as if she were gazing through the wrong end of a telescope. Describing a man's intrusion into her house, she says, "We looked at each other for what seemed a long time, and then he saw my husband on the stair landing. 'Chicken Delight,' he said finally...