Preview
  • Slouching Towards Bethlehem

  • Picador Modern Classics
  • By: Joan Didion
  • Narrated by: Maya Hawke
  • Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins
  • 4.8 out of 5 stars (5 ratings)

Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

By: Joan Didion
Narrated by: Maya Hawke
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $14.99

Buy for $14.99

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's summary

"Narrating in a voice as clear and sustaining as a cool glass of water, Hawke’s unflashy approach allows the words to reveal their magic."—The Orange County Register

This program is read by actor and singer-songwriter Maya Hawke, star of Netflix's
Stranger Things.

Celebrated, iconic, and indispensable, Joan Didion’s first work of nonfiction,
Slouching Towards Bethlehem, is considered a watershed moment in American writing. First published in 1968, the collection was critically praised as one of the “best prose written in this country.”

More than perhaps any other book, this collection by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era captures the unique time and place of Joan Didion’s focus, exploring subjects such as John Wayne and Howard Hughes, growing up in California and the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, and, especially, the essence of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture. As Joyce Carol Oates remarked: “[Didion] has been an articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time, a memorable voice, partly eulogistic, partly despairing; always in control.”

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

©2017 Joan Didion (P)2025 Macmillan Audio
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Critic reviews

“In her portraits of people, Didion is not out to expose but to understand, and she shows us actors and millionaires, doomed brides and naive acid-trippers, left wing ideologues and snobs of the Hawaiian aristocracy in a way that makes them neither villainous nor glamorous, but alive and botched and often mournfully beautiful.... A rich display of some of the best prose written today in this country.” —Dan Wakefield, The New York Times Book Review

What listeners say about Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    4
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    4
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    4
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Takes you to a different time

I’ve heard from many in the literary community that Joan Didion is one of the very best to ever do it and was excited to see Slouching Towards Bethlehem done as an audiobook.

I thought everything was good - but not great. The narration was fine, aside from a few mispronunciations (Chapultepec and others), the writing intriguing but not spectacular. I am glad that I sampled Didion’s work, especially resonant were the chapters toward the beginning and end - the woman accused of killing her husband and her recollections of Hawaii and New York.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!