Try to imagine Franz Kafka speeding along a California freeway, or sitting around with some rock musicians, or lolling on a Honolulu beach. You can't quite, can you? Nevertheless, such images—in their very incongruity—pinpoint the what-is-wrong-with-this-picture? feeling I had while reading Joan Didion's new collection of essays, The White Album…. I was tempted to dismiss the sensation altogether: Maybe the problem resided with me, rather than Didion, who is, after all, a very good writer. But it lingered and I had to pay attention.

The author, I finally realized, is the purveyor of a very streamlined model of angst. Like tubular furniture, there are no cumbersome appendages or unnecessary details. Everything is pared down for maximal depressive effect…. [This way of arranging reality] is not, at any rate, in itself objectionable as a style. It worked, for instance, supremely to her advantage in her first collection...