Slouching Towards Bethlehem

1.     Dial-a-devotion (proper noun):

A telephone service run by church-affiliated volunteers that rose to popularity in the early 1960s and that allowed users to call a phone number to hear a pre-recorded devotional

“This is the California, where it’s easy to Dial-a-Devotion, but hard to buy a book.” (“Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream,” Page 4)

2.     The dream (noun):

In Didion’s usage, the ideal, intriguing, meaningful life promised by movies and popular media

“What was most startling about the case that the State of California was preparing against Lucille Miller was something that had nothing to do with law at all, something that never appeared in the eight-column afternoon headlines but was always there between them: the revelation that the dream was teaching the dreamers how to live.” (“Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream,” Page 17)

3.     desultory (adjective):

lacking in purpose or enthusiasm

“After Mrs. Hathaway left, there were desultory attempts at reminiscing, but man’s country was receding fast; they were already halfway home […]” (“John Wayne: A Love Song,” Page 40)

4.     The movement (noun):

a loosely-aligned group of progressive causes and groups that were popular with the hippie generation of the 1960s, including Civil Rights marches and antiwar protests

“She became the voice that meant protest, although she would always maintain a curious distance from the movement’s more ambiguous moments.” (“Where the Kissing Never Stops,” Page 47)

5.     ersatz (adjective):

describes a substitute or lesser version of an idea or object

“Although Miss Baez does not actually talk this way when she is kept from the typewriter, she does try, perhaps unconsciously, to hang on to the innocence and turbulence and capacity for wonder, however ersatz or shallow, of her own or of anyone’s adolescence.” (“Where the Kissing Never Stops,” Page 57)

6.     bourgeois (adjective):

characteristic of the upper middle class, and generally used as a pejorative term suggesting an ethic of consumerism or disregard for the working class

“[…] he is rigidly committed to an immutable complex of doctrine, including the notions that the traditional American Communist Party is a ‘revisionist bourgeois clique,’ that the Progressive Labor Party, the Trotskyites, and the ‘revisionist clique headed by Gus Hall’ prove themselves opportunistic bourgeois lackeys by making their peace appeal not to the ‘workers’ but to the liberal imperialists; and that H. Rap Brown is the tool, if not the conscious agent, of the ruling imperialist class.” (“Comrade Laski, C.P.U.S.A. (M.-L.),” Page 61-62).

7.     Haight Street (proper noun):

the main street of the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco (sometimes referred to as the Street) that became the center of the hippie dropout movement in the mid-1960s which was characterized by transient/homeless youth, a commitment to nonparticipation in society, free love, and rampant drug use

“I am looking for somebody called Deadeye and I hear he is on the Street this afternoon doing a little business, so I keep an eye out for him and pretend to read the signs in the Psychedelic Shop on Haight Street when a kid, sixteen, seventeen, comes in and sits on the floor beside me.” (“Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” Page 86)

8.     joss sticks (plural noun):

thin pieces of wood coated with slow-burning incense

“Michael’s mother, Sue Ann, is a sweet wan girl who is always in the kitchen cooking seaweed or baking macrobiotic bread while Michael amuses himself with joss sticks or an old tambourine or a rocking horse with the paint worn off.” (“Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” Page 95)

9.     The Diggers (proper noun):

a group of activists and community theater performers in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood who prized collective action and authenticity. Though their performances were often confrontational, they also provided medical and food services in the neighborhood; this conflicting character was due to their lack of official leadership and competing goals

“Arthur Lisch is a kind of leader of the Diggers, who, in official District mythology, are supposed to be a group of anonymous good guys with no thought in their collective head but to lend a helping hand” (“Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” Page 99)

10. flash (noun):

the moment when a hallucinogenic drug like LSD begins to exhibit powerful effects on the user

“A great deal of acid was being cut with Methedrine, which is a trade name for an amphetamine, because Methedrine can simulate the flash that low-quality acid lacks.” (“Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” Page 108)

11. the Feminine Mystique (proper noun):

a term coined by noted feminist Betty Freidan, in her 1963 book of the same name, that describes the long-held assumption that women would be fulfilled by traditional gender roles

“Whenever I hear about the woman’s trip, which is often, I think a lot about nothin’says-lovin’-like-something-from-the-oven and the Feminine Mystique and how it is possible for people to be the unconscious instruments of the values they would strenuously reject on a conscious level, but I do not mention this to Barbara.” (“Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” Page 113)

12. diffident (adjective):

modest in a way that suggests a lack of confidence

“We are brought up in the ethic that others, any others, all others, are by definition more interesting than ourselves; taught to be diffident, just this side of self-effacing.” (“On Keeping a Notebook,” Page 136)

13. Phi Beta Kappa (proper noun):

a long-standing, prestigious honors society that is highly selective; not to be confused with a social sorority

“I had not been elected to Phi Beta Kappa. This failure could scarcely have been more predictable or less ambiguous (I simply did not have the grades), but I was unnerved by it; I had somehow thought myself a kind of academic Raskolnikov, curiously exempt from the cause-effect relationships which hampered others.” (“On Self-Respect,” Page 142)

14. The System (proper noun):

the conglomerate of Hollywood studios that was characterized by its tight control of the content and production of films throughout the first several decades of the film industry

“The System not only strangles talent but poisons the soul, a fact supported by the rich webs of lore.” (“I Can’t Get that Monster Out of My Mind,” Page 150)

15. wagon-train morality (noun):

a belief system that prioritizes loyalty, social fabric, and survival of the group over broader philosophical concerns

“I am talking, of course, about the kind of social code that is sometimes called, usually pejoratively, ‘wagon-train morality.’ In fact that is precisely what it is.” (“On Morality,” Page 158)

16. Chekhovian (adjective):

Characteristic of the works of Anton Chekhov, whose plays and stories featured everyday characters dealing with loss, frustration, and change

“If I could make you understand that, I could make you understand California and perhaps something else besides, for Sacramento is California, and California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things had better work here, because here, beneath that immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent.” (“Notes From a Native Daughter,” Page 172)

17. Henry Kaiser (proper noun):

a businessman who popularized the resort hotel in Hawaii and is widely regarded among the Hawaiian elite of the 1960s as the harbinger of ruinous cultural change; his name is often used as a reference to the turning point in Hawaii’s economy from agriculture to tourism

“‘Not since Mr. Kaiser,’ they would say, as if the construction of the Hawaiian Village Hotel on a few acres of reclaimed tidal flat near Fort de Russy had in one swing of the builder’s crane wiped out their childhoods and their parents’ childhoods, blighted forever some subtropical cherry orchard where every night in the soft blur of memory the table was set for forty-eight […]” (“Letter from Paradise, 21° 19’ N., 157° 52’ W.” Page 189-190)

18. The Big Five (proper noun):

a group of sugar-processing companies that wielded enormous political power and colluded to retain power over Hawaii’s economy in the century leading up to Hawaii’s statehood

“The Big Five companies—C. Brewer, Theo H. Davies, American Factors, Castle & Cooke, and Alexander & Baldwin—began as ‘factors’ for the sugar planters; in effect they were plantation management” (“Letter from Paradise, 21° 19’ N., 157° 52’ W.” Page 198)

19. Nisei (noun):

a second-generation immigrant to the United States from Japan, notable in Hawaii for their rising importance to the culture after World War II

“[…] but Ben Dillingham was overwhelmingly defeated in his 1962 campaign for the United States Senate by Daniel Inouye, a Nisei.” (“Letter from Paradise, 21° 19’ N., 157° 52’ W.,” Page 200)

20. arriviste (noun):

a French term referring to someone who is newly wealthy and characterized by their desire to rise to meet their new social status

“If they are from Honolulu but not at all arriviste they talk about opening boutiques and going into the real-estate business and whether or not it was rude for Jacqueline Kennedy to appear for dinner at Henry Kaiser’s in a muumuu and bare feet.” (“Letter from Paradise, 21° 19’ N., 157° 52’ W.,” Page 204)

21. metastasis (noun):

the development of malignant growths in relation to cancer, used figuratively to indicate the corruption or decay in society

“No aesthetic judgment could conceivably apply to the Newport of Bellevue Avenue, to those vast follies behind their hand-wrought gates; they are products of the metastasis of capital, the Industrial Revolution carried to its logical extreme […]” (“The Seacoast of Despair,” Page 210)

22. trompe l’oeil (noun):

a visual illusion in art that suggests three-dimensional work by using realistic imagery and tricks of perspective; used figuratively to refer to a false image of wealth or happiness

“They could be cajoled, flattered, indulged, given pretty rooms and Worth dresses, allowed to imagine that they ran their own houses and their own lives, but when it came time to negotiate, their freedom proved trompe l’oeil.” (“The Seacoast of Despair,” Page 212)

23. Santa Ana (proper noun):

Downslope wind that precipitates hot, dry weather, originates inland, and effects parts of Southern California including Los Angeles; widely believed to effect human behavior

“I have neither heard nor read that a Santa Ana is due, but I know it, and almost everyone I have seen today knows it too.” (“Los Angeles Notebook,” Page 217)

24. Sex and the Office (proper noun):

Helen Gurley Brown’s follow-up to Sex and the Single Girl; Brown wrote nonfiction imploring women to gain financial and sexual freedom from traditional patriarchal roles

“‘I just want to say that this Sex for the Secretary creature—whatever her name is—certainly isn’t contributing anything to the morals in this country. It’s pathetic. Statistics show.’

‘It’s Sex and the Office, honey,’ the disc jockey said.” (“Los Angeles Notebook,” Page 221)

25. engagé (adjective):

from the French for “to engage,” being socially or politically active or interested

“They imported garden chairs which did not sell very well at Hammacher Schlemmer or they tried to market hair straighteners in Harlem or they ghosted exposés of Murder Incorporated for Sunday supplements. I think that perhaps none us was very serious, engagé only about our most private lives.” (“Goodbye to All That,” Page 232)