To Joan, With Love
I first read one of Joan Didion’s novels when I was sixteen. I was just beginning to dip my toes into classic literature and came across an article written by Byliner. The piece, entitled “7 Best Joan Didion Books You Need To Read Before You Die”, catalogued some of her most famous works. Among the list was Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Didion’s first non-fiction book. The novel, released in 1968, is a collection of essays from her experiences living in California throughout the decade. I’d never read an essay collection before, so I thought I’d look into it a bit more.
When you search Joan Didion on Google, you are given 2,900,000 results in 1.85 seconds. That’s a lot of data to sift through. It makes sense, though, because she’s a polarizing figure in American journalism. I learned this quickly when my copy of Blue Nights arrived in the mail. I’d decided to read this, rather than Slouching Towards Bethlehem, because I’ve always been drawn towards grief. As a child, I watched episodes of Dateline NBC with contagious curiosity and longed for the day that I could attend a funeral. I didn’t like the idea of people dying, but I desperately wanted to be part of something. The collective anguish amongst mourners seemed like something, and so I tried to think of ways to feel it too.
Blue Nights details Joan’s grieving process after the death of her daughter, Quintana Dunne. I devoured the novel with reverence, wanting to absorb each sentence until there was nothing left. When I finished it, I cried. I cried for the loss of Quintana (by the end of the book, I felt like I knew her too.), I cried for the permanent sense of melancholy that seemed to live within Joan, but mostly, I cried for the pieces of myself that I recognized within her.
Joan is often described as an outcast. When you have the sort of perception for other human beings that she does, it can become tricky to make friends. I should know. I am not, by any means, calling myself as sharp as her. But I do know what it’s like to feel like you don’t belong. I’ve felt that way my entire life. To manage the sadness that can sometimes come from such a feeling, I’ve always turned to books. I end up feeling profoundly impacted by most things that I read, but it’s rare that I take a moment to openly weep after I’ve read the final page. I wondered, how is it possible that a woman who I have never met, who lived out her youth during a completely different generation, can put almost every thought I’ve ever had down on paper so eloquently?
In The White Album, Didion says, “I want you to understand exactly what you are getting: you are getting a woman who for some time now has felt radically separated from most of the ideas that seem to interest other people.” By understanding the differences between herself and those around her, she takes the powerless notion of feeling like you don’t belong, and turns it on its head. In a single sentence, Joan Didion created a home for those that feel they have nowhere to go.
After finishing Blue Nights, I knew I would be taking refuge in Joan’s words going forward. I was hungry for more of her, desperate for her wisdom to illuminate parts of myself that I had not yet come to know. Didion was raised on multiple military bases, her childhood falling right in the middle of World War II. It was during this time, she says, that she began to feel different from everyone else. “I tended to perceive the world in terms of things read about it,” she told The New York Times in 1979.
Eventually, a revelation fell upon Didion: “[she became] paralyzed by the conviction that the world as I had understood it no longer existed.” This quote struck a chord with me. I have always been one to take things too personally. When life changes, as it naturally does, I become convinced that it is because I have done something to deserve it. Perhaps I didn’t smile back at a stranger on the street, and now I am paying the price. Or, maybe, I made up an excuse to get out of plans with a friend, and have been forced to deal with repercussions dealt by the universe.
I like to know everything that there is to know. Change puts a roadblock in that process. And thus, I detest it. I knew the exact feeling that Joan was describing. The way your palms begin to sweat when you realize life is transforming, how your heart starts to thunder against your chest when you acknowledge that there is nothing you can do to stop it. But since falling in love with Didion’s novels, change now comes with a new feeling. A sense of calm after the storm, because I remember that she has been here before and lived to tell the tale. I tell myself, “this did not kill Joan Didion and it will not kill you, either.”
I have never met Joan and I most likely never will, yet I owe her nearly every ounce of wisdom I’ve obtained throughout my teenage years. She has given me shelter within the pages of her stories when I thought I would never find any, she’s dusted me off and reminded me that I will survive whatever problem I’m facing when I was sure it would be my demise. I carry her words with me everywhere that I go, clutching them tightly like a blanket of security. I first read one of Joan Didion’s novels when I was sixteen and I am all the wiser for it.
Sources
“7 Best Joan Didion Books You Need To Read Before You Die.” Byliner.com - Satisfy Your Curiosity, Fill The Information Void, 8 July 2019, byliner.com/joan-didion/stories/some-dreamers-of-the-golden-dream/.
Didion, Joan. The White Album. Simon & Schuster, 1979.
Kakutani, Michiko. “Joan Didion: Staking Out California.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 10 June 1979, www.nytimes.com/1979/06/10/books/didion-calif.html.
McNamara, Robert. “Joan Didion, Essayist and Author Who Defined New Journalism.” ThoughtCo, 4 Feb. 2019, www.thoughtco.com/joan-didion-4582406.