On Joan Didion

1. In the third paragraph of her essay “Why I Write”, Didion (we will not call her "Joan") says, "I do not think in abstracts." In the next paragraph she talks about her mind's attraction to "the specific, to the tangible, to what was generally considered...the peripheral." How is this issue worked out in her essay? How does this struggle between the abstract and the specific relate to the end of her essay? Why DOES she write?Obviously, we won't be dealing with simple "yes" and "no" questions in this class! Write a paragraph or two giving your ideas about one or two of the points raised here. Don't write a really long essay, just make some pointed comments and, if you have more to say on one of the other issues, then write another post. Be sure to dialogue with other students in the class and, when you respond to someone, address him or her by name and sign your own post.ALWAYS give examples from the reading to back up what you say. If your ideas can't be supported by what you've read, then it doesn't have much value here. Persuade us to your perspective by using examples.

"The picture tells you how to arrange the words and the arrangement of the words tells you, or tells me, what's going on in the picture. Nota bene: It tells you. You don't tell it." (98)

This one sentence pretty much answers the question of why Didion writes. As she states, she often has pictures in her mind, pictures that "shimmer around the edges" (2) but always has one question in mind: "What is going on in these pictures in my mind?" (2) Didion goes on to state, and clearly indicates in the quote I opened with, that it is the process of writing that answers this question. As the words pour onto the page, as they arrange themselves to form perfect sentences and perfect paragraphs, they feed her the answer to what specifics are happening in the images in her head. There is no need for the abstract, only for the specific, for the shimmering details that explain everything to her so clearly.

With the way Didion's mind works, she needs these answers almost like she needs air to breathe, and *that* is why she writes. She writes, because only through writing can she be told by the words what is happening in those pictures.

2. What distinction does Didion make between truth and "an accurate factual record" in “On Keeping a Notebook”? How is this idea developed in the essay? Are there examples you can cite that help us figure out the distinction? Why DOES she keep a notebook?You don't have to answer all of these questions in any one post. I offer up all these thoughts so that they will all be covered as you make additional contributions and discuss them.

Didion's writing is so very Hunter S. Thompson/Gonzo journalism, except that it is not journalism in any real way at all. Thompson's body of work was all about style, deeply submerging himself into the truth of a story in such a profound way as to make even the most basic thing a self aggrandizing adventure that would suck the reader in. There is no question that many of his journalistic endeavors are not "accurate factual records".

However, as with Thompson, this is not what Didion is setting out to achieve. She doesn't care about the actual fact of things, but rather, about her subjective truth. As a writer, her creative license allows her to heighten any memory she wishes - to add and subtract details, enhance things, alter pieces. Didion says in her essay "I tell what some would call lies" (138), but they are not lies. Instead, everything she writes, the notes she keeps, are her truth. "I have always had trouble distinguishing between what happened and what merely might have happened, but I remain unconvinced that the distinction, for my purposes, matters" (138). This statement, along with explanations of the type of notes she actual keeps help the reader grasp where they might tease out fact from truth.

The truth of the matter is anyone who writes in this 'all about me and my subjective truth' style may not exactly be giving a news report, but they are setting the stage for some delightful analysis of the autobiographical treasures throughout the text. When the reader knows that the glittery truth sprinkled across the pages is an inside look at the authors mind and "how it felt to be me... what it was to be me" (138-9), it is a playground.

In that sense, the factual record is useless. Then it would not be literature at all, but simply a diary of mundane events. Didion's ability to turn every day events into the story of how she perceived and remembered them is what makes them worth reading.

3. There is an irony now when we read “Goodbye to All That”, because though Didion and her husband moved back from New York City to California, as we are told in the essay, they soon returned to NY for good and Didion still lives here. Didion had gone on a writing assignment to California where she was supposed to observe the flowering of the "Summer of Love" in San Francisco and take the measure of the hippie movement. She later said that what she found there was a place where "adolescents drifted from city to torn city, sloughing off both the past and the future as snakes shed their skins, children who were never taught and would never now learn the games that had held the society together."Ok, my question for you here is what is the emotional trajectory of this essay? How does she trace her falling-out-of-love with New York City? What kinds of details anchor this movement? What kinds of images?What are the connections of the writing here to what we learn about her writing techniques in the other two essays?Again, don't answer all of these questions in a long essay. Start nibbling away at them. Give examples, always, to support what you say!


This entire essay reads to me like a Didion fable... when we are young, optimistic, and foolish, we fall in love. We honeymoon the hell out of it, refusing to see the factual record of things, always seeing the "truth". As we grow older, the cracks start to show, the walls around us crumble, "not all of the promises would be kept" (231). The experience of moving to New York, knowing that it, and not the boy on the other end of the phone, was going to win her heart shows the love affair that it was for her. The manner in which every detail of the city, down to the miserable cold and snow, seemed beautiful and perfect to her parallels the youthful naiveté with which one loves before they know any better.

As Didion says, for someone coming from the west coast, New York is this fantasy utopia of sorts. Her language reflects that as she uses words like "beautiful", "shining", "gold silk", "glittered". She describes the experience of first immersing herself in New York like "the way you love the first person who ever touches you and never love anyone quite that way again." It is indeed a love affair for her, and like any good love affair, she is at least wise enough to know "it would cost something sooner or later" (227).

Much like any youthful love, the honeymoon comes to an end, and Didion speaks of realizing that she had stayed too long, becoming bored with the routine of things, with the people and places she has been surrounded by for all these years. As she falls out of love with the city, she does what many young people do, fall directly into the arms of another love, and promptly marries him. Though she has fallen out of love, she still carries with her the happy memories of that wondrous time, exaggerating them in a way unique to her, remembering things the way she saw them through her youthful, eager, hungry eyes, and not the way a bystander may see them at all - but isn't that what love does, after all?