EXPRESS YOURSELF
A Few Thoughts on Joan Didion
She taught us to tell the stories that made us uncomfortable
Once in a while, you read something that is so indelible in its tone and temperament that it immediately changes what you imagine writing is all about. That is how it was for me with Joan Didion. It’s not that I recognized myself in her writing, which is why you sometimes respond so strongly to a writer. Instead, I felt like I recognized her, and felt I knew her intimately, even after just a few paragraphs. She was one of a kind, and yet she also embodied something about the era and its pervasive quality of being ill at ease, confusing, and chaotic at the core, while layered over with desperate efforts at order and normalcy.
I knew I’d never write like her — no one did — but she changed the way I wrote in a profound way. Despite what seemed like her chilliness, her work was very emotional (the emotion was that chilliness) and she showed me that it was both possible and necessary to incorporate that into every word on the page. But first of all, she was a fastidious, exacting reporter. She was a minesweeper, viewing every setting intensely and clocking every detail that mattered. Obviously, she was an incredible stylist, but I think that praise often overlooks the fact that her style was dependent on her talent and…
