010: blogging towards bethlehem

america’s next thought daughter

I’m off to LA, so naturally I am immersing myself in California classics. I’ve just finished Eve Babitz Slow Days, Fast Company, which inspired me to book a table at Musso & Frank and my soundtrack is an endless loop of Ultraviolence and NFR.

Down on the West Coast, they got their icons, their silver starlets, their Queens of Saigons — and Joan Didion’s packing list.

Joan Didion at her Los Angeles Home via Netflix

Joan Didion’s packing list from The White Album

Like clockwork, the iconic White Album packing list has re-entered the zeitgeist, this time courtesy of a note by

victoria zuzak

. The list pops up every so often — as seen in this Into The Gloss piece and this AnOther article from nine years ago.

Joan is trending. Exhibit A: why we all want to be Joan Didion by

rachel moss

, Exhibit B: A month long focus on Joan by a reading life, and Exhibit C: A Three Part Series on The White Album by

Amanda!

And let’s not forget Kendall Jenner’s micro bikini beach read and Marc’s January reading hour, both featuring The Year of Magical Thinking.

Kendall via instagram, Marc via instagram

Everybody wants to be America’s next thought daughter. A bi-coastal elite dripping in intellectual glamour whose prose is smooth, upheld through clever restraint. I am guilty of wanting to be her, of hoping a plane from New York to LA, renting a bungalow and writing my big brain ideas down on a Chateau notepad. We are not unique in this dream to live the life of an enigma.