Alissa Wilkinson at the NYT:
Somehow, this case keeps surprising us. But one person who regarded it without shock — as if it was the inevitable conclusion of a panicked era — was Joan Didion, who was living and working in Hollywood when the murders occurred. In her 1978 essay “The White Album,” regarded as a seminal account of the era, she writes about the ripples of terror the murders provoked. “These early reports were garbled and contradictory,” with different numbers of victims and explanations of what happened, Didion writes. “I remember all of the day’s misinformation very clearly, and I also remember this, and wish I did not: I remember that no one was surprised.”
Reality was barely tangible in the summer of 1969, with its highs and lows, its muddled impressions and half-understood headlines. Cause and effect seemed to be breaking apart. In some respects this was simply the inevitable result of a country becoming saturated in images because they had a screen at home. A movie theater was a place to go if you wanted to see a whole story, beginning to end. But a TV you could turn on and off, and you never knew what would be there when you turned it on again.
more here.
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