Review of Joan Didion's Notes to John
The couch-side view of a great author might provide some voyeuristic gratification; the thought that people who are not like us suffer like us might satisfy some, but this was not Didion writing polished prose, merely a grocery list of issues with her family. You won't find clunky sentences like 'She had said that absolutely she agreed that depression could be a motivating agent for people…' in any of her finely-chiselled novels.
No easy answers
She could have simply thrown the lot away or burnt them, so the fact that they are now in the public domain means she wanted it that way. This is usually the publishers' justification. But she was 87 when she died, and might have simply forgotten they were there. However, she had once told an interviewer, 'I've never written anything that wasn't for a reader. I cannot imagine writing not for a reader.' Clearly, there are no easy answers; you react to the book on feel and emotion.
When Gabriel Garcia Marquez's last novel Until August was published (he could have thrown it away too), I argued in these columns that his sons might have served the cause of fiction. With the publication ofNotes I find my position has clarified somewhat. Yes, for fiction (Kafka, Nabokov, Marquez), no to psychiatrist notes. There is an ethical question here that cannot be avoided even if the main subjects — Didion, Dunne, their daughter Quintana, their parents, Joan's brother, the psychiatrists — are all dead.
Didion's cancer, her abuse as a young woman, her daughter's alcoholism and hospitalisations and other personal details are unlikely to hurt anyone. The public's right to know is usually inviolable, but reading about 'romantic degradation' as Didion calls physical abuse at the hands of an early boyfriend, about alcoholism in the family, especially that of her daughter, can be painful.
The entries are extremely personal and share confidential information, particularly about her daughter who died within a couple of years of the final entry. Maybe it is the commercial exploitation of a family's trauma that provokes that painful feeling. I am uncomfortable about watching someone die in a car crash.
There are flashes of the writer Didion is, of course. When Didion and Dunne consider giving their daughter a substantial sum of money, her psychiatrist suggests holding off if they decide they do not trust her values. 'I said I did trust her values,' Didion reports. 'I just didn't trust her common sense.'
Amazing fortitude
You can't help admiring the amazing fortitude of a writer, a candidate for the Nobel, who crafted some of the finest essays and novels of our times, even ifNotesisn't one of them.
Didion's own response to posthumous publication was laid out in a brilliantNew Yorkeressay in 1998. On the Ernest Hemingway estate's decision to publish from notes and treatments left behind after the author killed himself, she wrote: 'This was a man to whom words mattered. He worked at them, he understood them, he got inside them…', and that 'there is a substantive difference between writing a book and making notes for it.'
DoesNotesstand on its own as an offering from a major writer? There is too much disorganised prose, too many similar thoughts being bounced around, too many pages that feel repetitive. And strangely, for what is an intimate memoir, it does not always draw the reader into the world of Didion the writer. Presumably, she has left that to critics and revisionists of the future with the message: This is what happened, you decide what it means.
Perhaps this book is meant for them, and for the pop psychologists who see a grain in a world of sand. For me,The Year of Magical Thinking,about the year following her husband's death, a grief observed and translated into literature, tells us more about Didion and her unfortunate family.
The reviewer's latest book is Why Don't You Write Something I Might Read?.
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Review of Joan Didion's Notes to John
These notes — summaries of sessions with a psychiatrist — were found in Joan Didion's desk after her death in 2021, addressed to her husband John Gregory Dunne. There are two questions here: a) should such notes have been published? and b) what is the quality of the book itself? Questions of ethics and aesthetics. The couch-side view of a great author might provide some voyeuristic gratification; the thought that people who are not like us suffer like us might satisfy some, but this was not Didion writing polished prose, merely a grocery list of issues with her family. You won't find clunky sentences like 'She had said that absolutely she agreed that depression could be a motivating agent for people…' in any of her finely-chiselled novels. No easy answers She could have simply thrown the lot away or burnt them, so the fact that they are now in the public domain means she wanted it that way. This is usually the publishers' justification. But she was 87 when she died, and might have simply forgotten they were there. However, she had once told an interviewer, 'I've never written anything that wasn't for a reader. I cannot imagine writing not for a reader.' Clearly, there are no easy answers; you react to the book on feel and emotion. When Gabriel Garcia Marquez's last novel Until August was published (he could have thrown it away too), I argued in these columns that his sons might have served the cause of fiction. With the publication ofNotes I find my position has clarified somewhat. Yes, for fiction (Kafka, Nabokov, Marquez), no to psychiatrist notes. There is an ethical question here that cannot be avoided even if the main subjects — Didion, Dunne, their daughter Quintana, their parents, Joan's brother, the psychiatrists — are all dead. Didion's cancer, her abuse as a young woman, her daughter's alcoholism and hospitalisations and other personal details are unlikely to hurt anyone. The public's right to know is usually inviolable, but reading about 'romantic degradation' as Didion calls physical abuse at the hands of an early boyfriend, about alcoholism in the family, especially that of her daughter, can be painful. The entries are extremely personal and share confidential information, particularly about her daughter who died within a couple of years of the final entry. Maybe it is the commercial exploitation of a family's trauma that provokes that painful feeling. I am uncomfortable about watching someone die in a car crash. There are flashes of the writer Didion is, of course. When Didion and Dunne consider giving their daughter a substantial sum of money, her psychiatrist suggests holding off if they decide they do not trust her values. 'I said I did trust her values,' Didion reports. 'I just didn't trust her common sense.' Amazing fortitude You can't help admiring the amazing fortitude of a writer, a candidate for the Nobel, who crafted some of the finest essays and novels of our times, even ifNotesisn't one of them. Didion's own response to posthumous publication was laid out in a brilliantNew Yorkeressay in 1998. On the Ernest Hemingway estate's decision to publish from notes and treatments left behind after the author killed himself, she wrote: 'This was a man to whom words mattered. He worked at them, he understood them, he got inside them…', and that 'there is a substantive difference between writing a book and making notes for it.' DoesNotesstand on its own as an offering from a major writer? There is too much disorganised prose, too many similar thoughts being bounced around, too many pages that feel repetitive. And strangely, for what is an intimate memoir, it does not always draw the reader into the world of Didion the writer. Presumably, she has left that to critics and revisionists of the future with the message: This is what happened, you decide what it means. Perhaps this book is meant for them, and for the pop psychologists who see a grain in a world of sand. For me,The Year of Magical Thinking,about the year following her husband's death, a grief observed and translated into literature, tells us more about Didion and her unfortunate family. The reviewer's latest book is Why Don't You Write Something I Might Read?.
