Cool, controlled, obsidian-sharp, its core of self-assurance wrapped in gauzy diffidence, engaged even (or especially) by what repels it, this voice greets you from the first acerbic sentence of the first piece, circa 1968, in Joan Didion’s new collection of old essays, Let Me Tell You What I Mean: “The only American newspapers that do not leave me in the grip of a profound physical conviction that the oxygen has been cut off from my brain tissue, very probably by an Associated Press wire, are. The voice was there almost from the beginning. Let Me Tell You What I Mean, by Joan Didion (Knopf, 192 pp., $23)
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