Tag Archives: 1934

RIP Joan Didion (1934 – 2021)

Joan Didion was an American writer.

Miami (1987) by Joan Didion

I don’t quite know what to think of Didion’s writing and whether I would like to read it.

She seems similar to contemporary Susan Sontag, however, Didion seems strictly non-philosophical.

Something did catch my eye, however, it is Philosophy and Vulnerability: Catherine Breillat, Joan Didion, and Audre Lorde (2019) by Matthew R. McLennan, a book in which Catherine Breillat, Joan Didion and Audre Lorde are called rigorous “nonphilosophers”.

Update 24/12: I was wrong. I came to that conclusion after delving into the White Album (1979) book, which seems to be an interesting portrait of 1960s counterculture. But not only that, she gave the world a beautiful nobrow analysis. In the book The White Album (1979)there is a passage where she writes about her habit of watching outlaw biker movies and she says:

“I suppose I kept going to these movies because there on the screen was some news I was not getting from The New York Times. I began to think I was seeing ideograms of the future.”

RIP Ronald Inglehart (1934 — 2021)

Ronald Inglehart was an American political scientist, co-author of the Inglehart–Welzel cultural map of the world based on the World Values Survey.

I discovered Inglehart by reading and reviewing Whiteshift (2018).

I believe the studies of values became important again after the failure of the end of history by Fukuyama and 9/11.

These two events proved that it’s not the economy stupid.

RIP Diane di Prima (1934 – 2020)

Diane di Prima was an American poet.

Her book Memoirs of a Beatnik (1969) was a fictionalized, erotic account about her experience in the Beat movement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlF_al8QuF4&ab_channel=J.ChristianGuerrero
Gang of Souls (1989), di Prima is from 2:20 onwards

Di Prima is featured in Gang of Souls (1989), the Maria Beatty documentary on Beat poets.

RIP Mark Barkan (1934 – 2020)


Mark Barkan (1934 – 2020) was an American songwriter and record producer.

In 1966, Barkan produced the album Psychedelic Moods by The Deep, credited as the first psychedelic album.

While researching his death, I came across the song “A Great Day For The Clown” (1967) which is a song not hard to fall in love with. It is also supposedly an Northern soul classic. Love the horns. Who does the horns?