South and West: From a Notebook

In her first new book of nonfiction since the elegiac memoir Blue Nights, Joan Didion takes us back to 1970, when she and her husband went on a Southern sojourn. As Didion interviews prominent local figures and describes motels, diners, a deserted reptile farm, and a visit with Walker Percy, she begins to suspect that the dichotomies of the South offer a more realistic reflection of America's true nature than does the optimism of her native California.