Claire Donald

These are children who are in like very dangerous situations.

And sometimes Joan would get an assignment for a magazine piece and she was like, I just feel like there's so much more that I need to write that's longer than a piece.

Like I need to write a book on what I am seeing here.

And so she starts thinking about doing a book and she starts working on a book of essays that will eventually be called

slouching towards Bethlehem wow and so slouching towards Bethlehem is this commentary of counterculture and hippies and everything that was going on and so she goes and she just emerges herself in the lives of these kids and she follows them around reporting on it she was with runaways teenagers on LSD girls who were 14 years old who were high in dirty apartments and then in the book she was introduced to this group and taken to where they live and here's a little part from the book

When I finally find Otto, he says, I got something at my place that will blow your mind.

And when I get there, I see a child on the living room floor wearing a reefer coat, reading a comic book.

She keeps licking her lips in concentration.

And the only off thing about her is that she's wearing white lipstick.

Five years old, Otto says, on acid.

Oh, that makes me like feel sick.

So sick.

Oh my God.

This is like what she is finding is like what's going on there.

Damn.

But you know what's so interesting is her response to it.

She was asked about how she felt when she saw this in the documentary.

And she said, well, it was, let me tell you, it was gold.

That's the long and short of it.

You live for moments like that if you're doing a piece.