Some Tributes to Joan Didion
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Just ahead of Christmas it was very sad to hear of the passing of Joan Didion.
She lived a long and extraordinary life and wrote so beautifully, so dutifully also. She was a chronicler of times, putting art into journalism, putting her life down on the page alongside all she captured.
She’s been one of the most important writers in my life – and there is so much of her work I still have to read. I like that. She’s a lifelong project. Her bibliography is the sort to give strength and intimidate simultaneously.
The recent/ish collection of essentially outtakes – South and West – showed that pieces written in the 1970s could still somehow reflect the mood and times in 2017 (when it was published) and 2020 (when I re-read some of it). And that’s the sort of writing Didion was – her towering essay achievements from the late 1960s and early 1970s have not only been a huge source of inspiration to so many writers but they continue to mean something on the page. Not just a guide for how someone might want to write, might hope to write – but observations so bold and on the money that they continue to stand.
There’s much to read by Didion and so much to read also about her. In the last few days there have been warm tributes and reminders of her greatness and the grace of her writing.
What Joan Didion Taught Me About Journalism by Jane Sullivan
Joan Didion Cast Off The Fictions of American Politics by Jacob Bacharach
Didion’s Prophetic Eye on America by Michiko Katutani
Life Lessons From My Aunt Joan Didion by Annabelle Dunne
Joan Didion Didn’t Play Golf But Her Writing Had Qualities For Which All Golfers Should Strive by Michael Bamberger
and that’s just getting started.
So many wonderful tributes in the past week. And rightly so.
There’s also the decent Netflix documentary, Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold which is not a complete story, but is worth your time. I’m planning to re-watch it now of course.
Here, also is a reprint of a 1961 essay on self-respect and there are so many famous Joan Didion quotes – about writing, usually – so better include a few of the best right here.
And below, some words I wrote about Didion some time ago – a decade or so. Looking back to the discovery of her work, how I found it and some favourites.
The great thing about a writer like Didion – the work is always there.
R.I.P.
I discovered Joan Didion’s work as part of the extended reading of a university course – the only extended reading I ever did as part of a university course. Most often my reading extended to anything and everything that wasn’t part of the course – or relevant to the course. It’s only when you finally graduate (eventually – in my case) that you learn that it was all relevant, even if it was an academic scenic route.
Anyway, the one English paper I really loved was centered on journalism and literature, the crossover, the “New Journalism” movement. And I found some of my favourite writers through this course, but far too many of them were male – that male voice so huge. George Plimpton too pleased with himself, Norman Mailer too bullish, Tom Wolfe dressed like he should be on a monopoly board or selling something, standing there looking silly on a can of chippies perhaps…hey I love their writing, they all did wonders with the word; had their own turn of phrase even through any smugness and anger. But it was a relief to find Janet Malcolm. And then the more cautious, considered voice of Joan Didion.
To this day I’ve probably read less than a quarter of her work – and only the non-fiction, I’ve not read or seen any of her plays (I’ve seen some of the films she’s written screenplays for – but always by fluke, not due to even knowing she’d written them). I’ve not read any of her novels. Maybe I will one day – sure. Why not? But I’m happy working through those wonderful essay collections – Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album – and those memoirs around grief (The Year of Magical Thinking, Blue Nights). Sometimes I’ll stop and read a page twice, three times. I’ll flick back to essays I’ve read before – I’ll read them again, leave others unfinished.
There’s something in the clarity – the closest to hearing/watching (reading) a writer think. Her words always direct – you believe what she is putting down on the line, in the line. Her life, her work. That blend so perfect.
I’ve heard criticisms directed at her, that she is wealthy, comes from well-to-do, married money, lived a life – that it’s easy to write if you have that kinda coin behind you. Sad bitterness that. You still have to turn up every day – or whenever, however – and get those words down. It might be a lot easier if you don’t have to worry about making bank. Then again you need to have something on your mind in order to write. I’ll hear none of that nonsense.
You read a few words from Didion’s books – any – and you know you’re reading a writer. I discovered her as part New Journalism, as someone shaping the creative non-fiction, putting her life down in the line – and on the line – as part of the work; offering her reactions and reflections within and around reportage. And I still marvel at how she does that, a gentle, artful stoicism – but also a version of fierceness, pride.
It pleases me to be this far through my life with so much of Didion’s work still to get through – and time left to continue absorbing/re-reading some of the material I have read. Her recent memoir around the grief of losing her husband and her daughter was an exquisite study in heartbreak. You’re surely not meant to ‘enjoy’ that sort of writing, but there was a loveliness in the account. A human battle. That’s where those stories around wealth and being comfortable all just fall away. You lose a part of yourself – two huge parts of yourself, two people in the close-knit fabric of your world – and you still turn up to face that blank page and put something down there. Something that is there for you and others to learn from. Moving, cathartic, a way of working through. And working on.
You read sentences that Joan Didion writes, that way she pares it back – to all it ever needs. And it’s been influential and yet of course inimitable.
Her books have aged well alongside her. I trust they’ll age well with me.