Telling It as She Means It

Abstract

Jason Mosser examines Joan Didion’s Let Me Tell You What I Mean, a late-career collection that gathers essays spanning more than three decades of Didion’s work. Mosser situates the volume within Didion’s ongoing preoccupation with writing as both aesthetic practice and epistemological inquiry, emphasizing her insistence that writing functions as an act of self-discovery rather than mere reportage. Through close engagement with essays on artistic process, journalism, politics, and literary inheritance, the review highlights Didion’s self-conscious treatment of voice, authority, and the fraught relationship between writer and reader. Particular attention is given to Didion’s reflections on figures such as Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell, as well as her contributions to New Journalism and her skepticism toward claims of objectivity. Mosser ultimately presents Let Me Tell You What I Mean as a reaffirmation of Didion’s distinctive moral clarity, stylistic precision, and enduring relevance as a writer for whom art, memory, and judgment remain inseparable.