Notes from the Flyover

Authors

  • Jason Mosser Georgia Gwinnett College Author

Keywords:

Joan Didion, South and West, American South, literary journalism, California

Abstract

Jason Mosser reviews Joan Didion’s South and West: From a Notebook (Alfred A. Knopf), notes from her 1970 journey through the Gulf South and a shorter section on California and the Patty Hearst trial. Mosser admires Didion’s eye for the revealing anecdote and symbolic detail but questions the book’s elliptical gaps, whether the notes were revised, and why they were published at all. He also finds in them a culturally elite, coastal perspective that treats the South as a stifling wilderness.

Author Biography

  • Jason Mosser, Georgia Gwinnett College

    Jason Mosser is a Professor of English at Georgia Gwinnett College, the first new liberal arts college in the 21st century. He earned his BA and MA from West Virginia University and his PhD from the University of Georgia. His book on New Journalism, including a chapter on Mailer’s The Armies of the Night, was published in 2012. He has also published articles on Mailer and on Hunter S. Thompson, and is currently at work on a literary journalistic piece about West Virginia.

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Published

2017-10-26

Issue

Vol. 11 No. 1 (2017)

Section

Book Reviews

How to Cite

Mosser, Jason. “Notes from the Flyover”. The Mailer Review, vol. 11, no. 1, Oct. 2017, pp. 280–284, https://mailerreview.org/journal/article/view/632.