Joan Didion

JD, I don't think my feeling is indifference - more repeated disappointment. I think I've written this up so many times over the years, on this board, that I probably shouldn't go over it again. But to recap, I think she's been lucky in her admirers (including, maybe, you!); I think she radiates a kind of glamour and cool; I think she writes about interesting subjects sometimes; she always seems like someone that one would be interested in and want to read.

But I also think, in practice, that her level of actual insight isn't often that high; her prose is unadventurous, a mannerism that stops her needing to try things, find words, take risks; and yes I think 'condescension' / superiority / 'I'm too mature for this' is far too much a default setting in her writing. Also I've read 2-3 novels and they really weren't worth much more than a dime - I couldn't see why she persevered with them.

And yet, I still think of her as a writer that I like.

(I only say all this again cos the admirable JD prompted it)

thinking about the prose again: how many great phrases, striking bundles of words, do you come across in reading Didion? can anyone remember any? I think perhaps she has little lyric sense; there isn't much semantic bounty or verbal music; she's the opposite of a Pynchon (whom I also frequently find exasperating for other reasons); and writing in her sort of plain style has been a way of legitimating this - or has sealed it, encouraged it to happen, put her unseen lyric gift to sleep.

hey team didion: can anyone point me in the direction of a all-of-a-sudden-while-at-my-folks-place-for-the-holidays-very-relevant JD quote i'm looking for? there's something - it coulda been in the last one - that she said about using the best plates, and how everyday is the day you should use the best plates. is this ringing any bells? she may have the edge over me in having phrased this well.

thank you in advance from me and my plate hoarding family

Did you ever find that?

I've been reading her Paris Review interview to celebrate Pancake Day. She says certain things with a very impressive all-American coolness. But she also says things that aren't very impressive.

She says that when she's writing a novel, she starts the day by retyping the whole thing from p.1, or p.20 or so. That makes it seem the more remarkable that her novels don't seem to include any good writing - unless it was all excised by the endless rewriting.

Her interviewer crawlingly says that DH Lawrence 'didn't know anything about women at all'. Didion says: 'No, nothing'.

Now, I don't like Lawrence. In some ways he is among my least favourite writers. But he was a human being in the C20 who was married to a woman and travelled the world with her; who had intense relations with his mother and perhaps other women. He wrote a lot about women (and men). Is it plausible to say of such a person that he 'didn't know anything about women at all'? What kind of discriminate literary judgement is this? You might as well say I don't know anything about books at all, even though I've lived around them all my life.

Of course, the duller truth is that women are different from one another. You can know one woman, and not know another. You can know some things and not others. That was probably the case with DHL.

My contribution for International Women's Pancake Day.

You might as well say I don't know anything about books at all, even though I've lived around them all my life.

maybe you don't!

i don't know; it seems a fairly standard hyperbolic statement. we could translate it as "d.h. lawrence's work takes a great interest in the relations between the sexes, but that interest, which qualified him as a remarkable writer on the subject to his contemporaries, makes him seem all the more egregious on the subject today; and it's fair to say that he seems entirely wrong-headed on the subject of women."

or we could accept the shorthand in its cattiness; it's not really joan didion's job, or anyone's -- unless, say, they're a lawrence scholar, or writing a survey of twentieth-century fiction -- to be immediately responsible to have developed opinions about d.h. lawrence ready and to hand.

well, I think it is true that most of us are ignorant in lots of ways about physical objects and processes (including eg books). This is a condition of which I always feel fairly aware.

But again, there are lots of things to know about books, levels of knowing. There are some things that I know about some books. It wouldn't be plausible to say I don't know anything about any books.

I think your paraphrase is very convincing, and much more sophisticated and interesting than Didion's / interviewer's statement (because you posit a connection between DHL's strong interest and his possible errors) -- until the last clause. I don't know whether we can assume that he seems entirely wrong-headed on this subject. We'd probably need to work a bit to remind ourselves exactly what he did think or say.

Again, I feel a bit doubtful that there is a 'subject of women' - that idea seems like part of the problem. But, maybe DHL did believe in it, and maybe that could be one way that he was wrong.

It wouldn't really have struck me much (these interviews are full of daft put-downs etc) - but she just doesn't come across very well in the interview as a whole. I always feel that Didion thinks she's a much better writer than she is - a strange effect.

But there is a fine sentence or two about sunsets on the West Coast which exemplify her American authority.

that's probably a pretty canny thing to say, and a good point from which to start investigating the subject of 'lawrence and women', if we choose to, if we're in some place to do so.

on the other hand, i don't really see that a passing topic (books didion wrote on as an undergraduate!) in an interview about writing nonfiction is a place where said subject really needs to be investigated: it seems a ridiculous level of precision to demand of anyone, that anything said about anything needs to hew that true to reasonable statement, to accuracy of expression. i'd probably have to give up on ever talking about books again, if that were the case.

(xpost)

barthelme put 'all the paris review interviews' on a list of things his students should study. i feel like they belong on a list of things no one that wants to write should ever, ever read, almost.

Didion is one of my favorite journalists and stylists, but I've long suspected she hasn't read a novel since the sixties.

This is what Didion said that made a bit of an impression on me.

"There's always something missing about late afternoon to me on the East Coast. Late afternoon on the West Coast ends with the sky doing all its brilliant stuff. Here it just gets dark."

A positive thing to do with Didion would be just to quote lines she's written that one thinks are good.

Great quote. The Year of Magical Thinking is a wonderful place to start. The deep seriousness actually goes with gusts of adventure, even fun, occasionally.Especially when she dreams about swimming with her daughter, or (apparently in the real-life waking world)exasperates a doctor with her self-taught sense of medical author-a-tah (as South Park's Cartman would put it). She's getting out of the house!

Although gravity (with those gusts) might be a more accurate description than "deep seriousness."

her novels don't seem to include any good writing

off-sides!

Didion is one of my favorite journalists and stylists, but I've long suspected she hasn't read a novel since the sixties.

I think her position is "if I've already got Henry James and Joseph Conrad what do I need with other authors"

my gf takes that line. it's kind of infuriating but also kind of impossible to argue with

A positive thing to do with Didion would be just to quote lines she's written that one thinks are good.

― the pinefox, Tuesday, March 8, 2011 11:37 AM Bookmark

"I am talking here about a time when I began to doubt the premises of all the stories I had ever told myself, a common condition, but one I found troubling." (The White Album)

"I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends."
(Slouching Towards Bethlehem)

seems like that one is the standard go-to quotation for Didion, but it's still so great.

yeah that would be mine, too

I don't especially remember it. Surely the go-to qns (ie the most famous) would be

'we tell ourselves stories in order to live'

and the first para or so of the 'slouching towards B' essay which really is striking, even to a sceptic like me.

I like bits of 'on the morning after the sixties' and 'goodbye to all that' also.

I find her most interesting in chunks. I mean, I know that's exactly what the publishers have always been shooting for -- but 'The White Album', e.g., does gain a lot of interest from being 'Didion does the 70s'. I think, too, that read with some mind to the fact of her mental state the thoughts, sentiments, expressed therein make more sense to a reader than if one tries to consider them the feelings of a vast, dispassionate brain -- I'm not entirely sure what I mean by that, now, having written it.

I'm not sure I don't get more out of John McPhee or Ellen Willis, say, as guides to the culture. But Didion's stuff maybe has more to do with the interplay of 'trying to be a guide to the culture' and 'trying to maintain your own individual psyche'.

curious about what you meant aactually by "feelings of a vast dispassionate brain".
Some of the more topical stuff can be so so, but I have a place in my heart for her languid writing on hotels in Hawaii or growing flowers in Malibu

The great strength of her later nonfiction is her iron stomach & unblinking gaze when she uses quotations - I attribute this to her lifelong admiration of Hemingway, her desire for the words to do 100% of the work when possible. From "God's Country," about Bush, which ran during the 2000 election:

This was a man who, when the Texas economy went belly-up in the mid-1980s, joined a group of Midland businessmen who met once a week under the guidance of a national group called Community Bible Study, the class format of which includes the twelve-step technique of personal testimony, in this case "seeing the truths of the Bible lived out in the lives of leaders and class members." The participants in Bush's class were "baby boomers, men with young families," a former member told Hanna Rosin of The Washington Post. "And we suddenly found ourselves in free fall. So we began to search for an explanation. Maybe we had been too involved with money. Maybe we needed to look inwardly and find new meaning in life."

She is quite good at that, I agree - but doesn't it largely rely on the daftness and inaptness of the things the stupid or wicked people say?

but her juxtapositions are done with perfect timing

btw her Reagan essay "In the Court of the Fisher King" is LOL funny.

She is quite good at that, I agree - but doesn't it largely rely on the daftness and inaptness of the things the stupid or wicked people say?

Sure but it's the way she frames it - her skill for decorating the frame within which the pre-existing horror will be displayed is remarkable. "the class format of which includes the twelve-step technique of personal testimony, in this case " and then the quote: it's like she's knotted the most economical noose. She also has (and whether this is a virtue or not depends on your outlook) a gift for the very subtle sneer - I can't say just how "the class format of which includes the twelve-step technique of personal testimony, in this case" manages to convey ridicule/disbelief, but it does

As I've said before (probably way upthread several times, years ago), I have often found a weakness of her writing to be the unsubtlety of the sneers (albeit done in this blank-looking style).

But that would be mainly in relation to the earlier work, I think. If she uses her time and ability to attack very nasty right-wing US politicians - something she seems to have done much more of in the last 2 decades or so - then that's fine by me, really.

She attacks lots of Democrats too: I remember one devastating paragraph about Bill Clinton in her (masterful) essay on the impeachment.

I've never understood what's so special about joan didion

like whenever I read her work I'm like ok this is alright what else

We've just two days explaining it!

I will now scroll up

But that would be mainly in relation to the earlier work, I think. If she uses her time and ability to attack very nasty right-wing US politicians - something she seems to have done much more of in the last 2 decades or so - then that's fine by me, really.

You might read "Political Fictions," a collection of her political essays. It does include her attacks on right-wing politicians, including Bill Clinton.

^^^ you beat me to that crack

not trying to troll here but when the pinefox said that her prose was unadventurous, yeah, I agree with that, that's probably the biggest stumbling block in me getting into her work, that's just my thing though, like, I look at it, and just think, yeah ok this is pretty american, these are some thoughts some people have

love this:

these are some thoughts some people have

just so we have our parameters defined, whose prose is "adventurous," and how?

^ im wonderin

I'd read an interview of Bret Easton Ellis where he sings Joan Didion's praises, and so I read a few passages, and I was a little shocked at how much he just wholesale appropriated her style, and why not? It's a pretty effective style. People should steal it more often.

these are some thoughts some people have

yeah sure, and that's actually a good way of putting it. hell, she certainly doesn't beat you over the head with any grand authorial voice. her prose is usually very unshowy, and she has a way of articulating the intuitive and even the banal but makes those thoughts fresh in a way that makes it seem like you are both in your head and out of it (or in the head of someone else that has these kind of banal though/connections and at the same time out of of that person's head). Her style is very Hemmingway (and by extension, Carver-esque) but she updates it in that the style reflects this condition that we all feel like we are living in a fiction/ dream that somehow doesn't line up with the fiction/dream that we see all around us, but still kind of does, or maybe we just still wish it did ... and this all makes us alienated from ourselves yadda yadda yadda .... so we "tell ourselves stories in order to live" in order to pinch ourselves and gain control and understanding and order but it never totally works so we keep doing it.

(And if Joan Didion were saying the above yammer she would do it much more effectively obv)

And her viewpoint is very American, very West Coast and I wonder how may people that are not so into her are not American and/or whether that makes a difference.

And for everyone who hasn't read her fiction, I would say pick up "Play It As It Lays" (very short and reads quickly too). Her fiction-writing style is also very cool and minimal and even reporterly, but also looser and plays up the dreamy haziness and it even has its experimental moments (one of her main things is switching between 1st and 3rd person).

in that "yeah I get it, so what the hell is so great a bout this" kind of way, but to me it's much more feminine

And maybe it is an American thing.

ha ha ... didn't mean to post those last two sentences

That is an interesting, suggestive-looking defence of Didion. Your sense of 'we are living in a fiction/ dream that somehow doesn't line up with the fiction/dream that we see all around us' seems to be quite true to an element of her work.

The idea that she is very American etc is interesting too, though I would like to hear what 'very West Coast' means in a writer. Perhaps English people say 'very Northern' and others don't know what it is supposed to mean; or perhaps they do know.

I didn't know I'd said she was unadventurous, but then it turned out I had. Of course the word doesn't matter much, or could be less precise than I wanted. Romeo says she's unshowy. That might be getting at the same thing. Certainly there are lots of ways of being a good writer. So, can a prose writer really be adventurous at all?

I thought about it, and I think I can name three who have been: James Joyce, Roland Barthes, Paul Morley -- all of whose writing has thrilled and moved me a good deal.

[btw I am English and on reflection I don't think I know what would be meant by 'very Northern', beyond differences in accents.

Probably only Stuart Maconie understands or credits this ontological divide]

I think that there's often an adventurousness to "unadventurousness," to prose characterized by its economy and seeming simplicity. Pinefox, stuff that you consider adventurous seems to be more maximal vs. the minimalness of Didion/Carver/Hemmingway (and his iceberg theory). Well, maximal certainly applies to Joyce and Pynchon (who you mention upthread). Barthes is pretty minimal for a cultural critic but I don't think he can be compared to Didion so well; two different projects. (I haven't read Morley, so no comment there). Funny that the 3 minimal authors I mention are all American (and even all-American .. ha). I don't think this style is necessarily American but it's probably more American than European and I really can't think of any British minimalists off the top of my head. Camus and Peter Handke would qualify as European minimalists I think.

As far as my "west coast" comment is concerned. There's definitely a kind of US west/east coast binary. It's really hard to get into that without making a lot of cringeworthy generalizations. And, unfortunately, California, and particularly LA/Hollywood are the big West Coast metonyms, and East Coast is often reduced to New York City and New England and the rest of both coasts are kind of different things that get left out and/or placed elsewhere. But anyways, West Coast ... long days, big vistas, highways, cars, movies, Manifest Destiny, gold rush and get-rich-quick, American Dream, the (obv bullshit) idea of American Utopia, deserts, sunshine, sexual freedom and transgression, anonymity (and making oneself new), and, later, counterculture and drugs ... that kind of thing ... and there's a disillusionment/aftermath to all that and it informs Didion's work. And, and this is I think what I was getting at really, I find Didion's style to be particularly West Coast in its spareness and imagery. I'm thinking mostly here of "Play It As It Lays" which is a Hollywood novel and has a lot of restless and purposeless highway driving and the alienation-from-self and fiction/dream thing I was talking about, and all of that isreflected in the style.

Of course, Pynchon is West Coast too ... so West Coast doesn't necessarily equal minimal.

And I think I only have a really vague idea of what "Northern" means, btw. I mean I guess there's, historically, the industrial and working-class-ness of some Northern cities, right? I dunno. Maybe someone can enlighten.

Didion's Where I Was From explicitly & at length explains how she is west coast. The character of California, the formation of what she'd call its character (I agree with her that there is a specifically Californian culture, an outlook; not that all who live there share it, necessarily, but that there is such a thing that informs and drives life there), has long obsessed her, and is almost always in play in her fiction. It has to do with property & water rights & a desire for comfort, an elevation of comfort as a sort of indication of grace -- it also has to do with a sort of preemptive alienation. That's like only a little of it, though - I went and got the book off the shelf, but I haven't read it in a while, and it's complex & elegant, I wouldn't want to just grab a good pull-quote. If the question "how is Didion a west coast writer?" is of interest to you, you should pick it up, anyway.

whenever I hear this chick's name I think she's actually a folk singer... man who am i thinking of...

preemptive alienation is exactly the vibe of didion's writing

Did she ever write horror? She has a good stylistic fit for it. (Maybe writing about the west coast is de facto horror ha!)

The bit I just read about seeing a Newport Beach high school team play against Costa Mesa in the 80s and getting beaten & the Newport kids chanting "Hey hey, that's OK, you're gonna work for us one day" counts as horror I think

What annoys you about it? Curious.

Thanks, poster Chuck Tatum. I had to think a bit before I could articulate this small observation.

xpost

Perhaps it's the unprocessed need for the writer to seem smarter than the people they're observing. I guess there's a line between allowing someone the space to damn themselves (which is fine) and unfairly making someone seem like a phoney (which might say more about the author than the subject).

Imagine someone (not) reacting to you like that in real life and it’s clear why it’s annoying.

the style referred to entered journalism (or anyway this is my under-informed guess) via the younger new yorker style-switch from a youthful over-admiration of henry james to the golden-bowl guilt phase of absorbing imitating and parodying hemingway and his mentor gertrude stein: whose combined shtick was (a) less is more, let the subtext sing in the air stripped of any DO-YOU-SEE-style announcement* plus in particular stein's penchant for repetition as a device for variation of mode

*where "not saying it" is a mark of shared sensibility: we needn't comment-explain bcz we all already get it (which narrowing of the "we" -- as chuck above suggests -- is actually kind of a betrayal of journalism i guess, certainly a super-complex ethical-aesthetical line that the NYer created and then made its early home in )

yes i am meant to be cleaning my kitchen floor and not at all on this thread, yell at me next time i post plz

"less is more" = leaving out the (b) = stein's use of repetition as a forensic device

I'm relieved to see that I broadly agree with Mark S, though without knowing enough about New Yorker magazine history.

I like his reference to a "betrayal of journalism".

Perhaps it's the unprocessed need for the writer to seem smarter than the people they're observing. I guess there's a line between allowing someone the space to damn themselves (which is fine) and unfairly making someone seem like a phoney (which might say more about the author than the subject).

― Chuck_Tatum

This is true, but this approach starts to ebb around the 1980s. It's why I admire Miami and the later work over the more famous early stuff.

I think it's important for the writer of features and reviews to know when to let the quote have some space around it, for the reader to fill, having established context. The writer also has to be choosy about quotes, not just pick the best or worst lines, but also not just stringing a lot of lines together, beyond just enough of the latter to give the idea, if that's what the artiste mainly does. I've had some hard times with that kind of writing, but it's worth doing, I think--of course some readers, incl. some editors want every damn thing spelled out. I even had one editor who told me to "spoonfeed," in so many words. I don't go around that joint no more.

As a reader, I find it offputting to have the writer jumping in there to explain everything, unless I'm reading an instruction manual or dispatch from a country/situation I've barely heard of etc.

I'm not talking about leaving space in "hard journalism," that is. The harder it is the more I want to be told about it.

anticipation: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/06/arts/design/joan-didion-hammer-museum-hilton-als.html

Who cares if she staged the photo in the article for a Williams Sonoma photo op? She tried to write.

betrayal of journalism my ass---in all the things I've read, some of her later writing, she provided the context, and so do the better New Yorker writers, rather jump in there with commentary, lecture points, that Gopnik Thurman etc "polymath" ponderosa

She did warn people not to forget she's in the room (as they tended to because she was so small and quiet, she said), because she's there to getcha (that was earlier though, I may never get back that far)

LOA wrapping up the trilogy this fall:

https://www.loa.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/9781598537871-185x300.jpg

I am excited to read the stage version of Magical Thinking