EXPRESS YOURSELF

A Few Thoughts on Joan Didion

She taught us to tell the stories that made us uncomfortable

Susan Orlean
Human Parts
Published in
4 min readJan 1, 2022

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Credit: Janet Fries / Getty Images

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…

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Susan Orlean
Human Parts

Staff writer, The New Yorker. Author of The Library Book, The Orchid Thief, and more…Head of my very own Literati.com book club (join me!)