What Links DePauw, Yale and Swarthmore? A Quote in USA Today

November 12, 2001

November 12, 2001, Greencastle, Ind. - Journalist and novelist Joan Didion, a National Book Award nominee and winner of a Breadloaf Fellowship, is out with a new book that includes a DePauw mention. Didion's Political Fictions contains eight essays that were originally published in the New York Review of Books.

The author says she was an outsider in high school, and in the book, Didion writes that her friends, "hung out in gas stations. They had not run for student body office. They had not gone to Yale or Swarthmore or DePauw, nor had they even applied. They had gotten drafted, gone through basic at Fort Ord," (formerly a US Army base in California).

Didion writes of how many Americans feel disconnected from the political process, and how politicians themselves, and the journalists who cover them, have lost touch with "the real life of the country."

A lengthy article in USA Today summarizes Joan Didion's book, and includes the excerpt in which DePauw is mentioned. You can read the article in its entirety online, by clicking here.

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