It feels weird to be here again, thinking through how I feel about a book regarding someone’s loss. I quote Hamlet above not because I agree with Claudius’s desire to stop Hamlet’s feelings; and certainly not because I trying to say the same for Joan Didion. Joan Didion’s pain and thoughtfulness and her research into the nature of grief and the very real sense of her own grief are all sympathetic and good and fine. But man Joan Didion’s whole worldview irks the shit out […]
It’s apparently possible to lose me in your book about death
Blue Nights by Joan Didion
So I was literally changing my tire on the side of the road, sitting in the gutter, crawling underneath in order to hook up the jack, just so I can remember to go get it fixed or replaced after work today, otherwise, when I might forget and have to try to change it at 6am when driving to work this morning. As it were, I had to stop off and fill it otherwise risk the spare popping or being too dangerous. As I was doing […]
Sort of What I Expected
I’ve wanted to read this for a while. I haven’t read any of Ms. Didion’s other works, but this felt compelling. My sister had a copy at her house, which I was visiting this past week, so I borrowed it, reading it in a couple of days and finishing it on a particularly turbulent flight home. As I read the pages of her working through attempts to make sense of the fact that her husband was dead, I recognized a bit of dark humor in […]
The Awakening. But in Hollywood.
“…the book is very…sordid, isn’t it? And tough – by which they mean not a tough read, but hard-hearted.” Not being a fan of book intros (spoilers, love) I generally wait until the end of a novel to see what has been illuminated. In my version, the introduction by David Thomason eloquently summarized the complicated appeal of this book. It is compelling, complex, and has unyielding momentum. The question is, what is it, and thus the protagonist Maria, moving toward? The answer? Nothing. Estranged from […]
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
“We are not idealized wild things. We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.” I really tried, but I didn’t like this one. I feel like maybe I’m not the right audience. It’s a book about loss, primarily, and […]