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The Use and Abuse of Joan Didion | THR Web Features | Web Features | The Hedgehog Review

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The only use that a mere perception of Joan Didion has at this moment in time is for nostalgia.

"It was just as nice as I hoped and dreamed it would be," sobs a young bride in the final line of Joan Didion's piece "Marrying Absurd." Just a few pages and slotted neatly in the Slouching Towards Bethlehem collection before more renowned essays, Didion's portrait of the Las Vegas wedding industry is full of jarring details. Shotgun marriages, chapels that churn through many ceremonies in one night, panic weddings to improve one's Vietnam draft status-it is, of course, an essay about the institution of marriage run amok, but it is also a piece about how meaning is created and conferred, a med

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