[By: Jerry W. Ward, Jr.] Hype matters. In his foreword for Joan Didion’s South and West: From a Notebook (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017), Nicholas Rich asserts that Didion’s prose has “cool majesty” as well as “an immaculacy as intimidating as Chelsea porcelain” (xi).  The assertion and the subject of the assertion invite scrutiny.  Truth be told, the sentence “Everyone in the place seemed to have […]