Just smother the author in kisses upon his or her rumpus-belliumpkuss, and the fawning LTHE editors will reward you with a big, red star. Kinda like the peanut M&Ms the good boys and girls would find on their desks after naptime was over.

How typical of Salon, and how irritating .

Andrew O'Hehir leaves no cliche unturned in his hagioreview of Joan Didion's memoir, and this...

It's one thing to say that Didion is the greatest living writer of American prose..

...in particular inspires a couple of questions: When did Philip Roth die? And what the hell is "American prose"??

I feel genuinely sorry for Ms. Didion's tragic losses over the last two years, but that does not seal her work in amber. And it must be said that much of that work has been egregious.

One example can be found in "Slouching Towards Bethlehem", wherein Didion famously interviewed a group of hippies. Though the tone of her description of them suggested that if she were looking any further down her nose she could see her lungs, that tone is supported by her excellent prose, so many believed (and adopted) her scorn of the hippie milieu. But it turns out that "muscular" writing of her's was a mask for pre-ordained contempt.

I read "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" in 1984 while attending university. Three years later, when Rolling Stone Magazine celebrated "The Summer of Love", they interviewed one of the hippies who had been in that room. The woman remembered Didion as "scowling" the entire time she interviewed her friends, long before they dropped the now-legendary acid. In fact, what Didion described as irresponsible nonsense - or "bullshit", as O'Hehir would have it - was in fact the group of hippies reacting to her - another square who just didn't get it.

Whether she got it or not, she did wield the pen, didn't she? I have not trusted her observations on anything since reading that interview in '87, even when I agreed with her overarching thesis. Cloaking Didion in the vestments of high-culture journalism is thus nonsensical, not to mention risible.

Oh, and one more thing. Please inform Mr. O'Hehir to stick to reviewing movies, because his literary knowledge is sorely lacking. Faulkner was not trying to "recover" the past, he was demonstrating - in book after book - how much of a trap it could be, and how past is too often prelude. That's not just my opinion, it's the conclusion of just about anyone who has seriously studied his work.

And the most famous American sentence is "Call me Ishmael", but don't take my word for it. Go ask the people at Bartlett's.

Like that reader of an earlier Didion review by Andrew O'Hehir, I, too, would have preferred a Didion experience to an O'Hehir experience.

But Mr. O'Hehir declined to quote from A Year of Living Magically. Why? Because I've already read enough of it. Now I didn't know that. (Didion's book was just published, right?) And also because the writer doesn't want his personal -- and rather self-important -- anecdotes to taint his readers' experience of the book. How do we know this? O'Hehir relates the sentiment in a personal -- and rather self-important -- anecdote.

Ack!

I suppose one page on Didion out of three is better than nothing. But I probably won't call it an "experience."

Like that reader of an earlier Didion review by Andrew O'Hehir, I, too, would have preferred a Didion experience to an O'Hehir experience.

But Mr. O'Hehir declined to quote from A Year of Living Magically. Why? Because I've already read enough of it. Now I didn't know that. (Didion's book was just published, right?) And also because the writer doesn't want his personal -- and rather self-important -- anecdotes to taint his readers' experience of the book. How do we know this? O'Hehir relates the sentiment in a personal -- and rather self-important -- anecdote.

Ack!

I suppose one page on Didion out of three is better than nothing. But I probably won't call it an "experience."

Mr. O�Hehir writes:

<<i>All of this is to say that Didion's fans experience her work on an intimate, personal level as well as an intellectual one. (Because of that, her influence on journalism is much more profound than the macho histrionics of Tom Wolfe or Hunter S. Thompson.) One of the reasons I'm not quoting from "The Year of Magical Thinking" is because you've probably read enough of it by now, if you're interested; another is that your reading of it belongs to you, and mine to me. >

So, which is it: that Didion universally reaches readers �on an intimate, personal level as well as an intellectual one.�, or that my reading belongs to me and far be it for you to color it with your interpretation? Rare it is to have a writer so completely express his hypocrisy in a single paragraph.

I for one, a drinking, drugging, male musician with an addiction to the ebb and flow of politics, most certainly experienced Hunter S. Thompson intimately and personally as well as intellectually. Perhaps you�ve forgotten all of your hermeneutics, or maybe you�re one of the �sensitive males� who reflexively regurgitate feminist homilies when confronted with old fashioned masculinity (and yes, it is old fashioned and we should well move beyond it�but it exists and it had, and has, its place). How dare you speak for anyone other than yourself and then claim to be above speaking for anyone else?

Please.

I just wanted to praise(although the word seems small)Mr.O'Hehir on a beautifully written review. Just wonderfull and eloquent. I can't hold myself back from buying this book. I have personally never read any of Ms. Didion's work and you've produced an emptiness and shame for never taking the time to do so.Thank you, wonderful, wonderful.

This letter is for Mr.O'Hehir. You don't have to publish.

I wish to thank Andrew O'Hehir for his brilliant, moving,and even humourous review. This is my first time writing such a letter--ever--but both my long-held appreciation for Didion and her work and my gratitude for such an eloquent acknowledgment of it on your Salon pages have inspired me to send a note of thanks. As a Canadian reader living far from NY or LA, it has always struck me as extraordinary that Didion's work, so grounded in American history and culture, reached so deeply into my own experience. O'Hehir nails it, though, by emphasizing her links to modernity, and the wider experience of the twentieth century "world" we all (and I guess I have to say we all know what we mean by "all") share. In canada I routinely teach Didion's essays in my university literature classes. My students get her. I will now use parts of the review of The Long Goodbye to enhance our discussion.

It is a credit to Salon that such a terrific piece appears on your pages. The pleasure is all ours.