Joan Didion is Having a Moment

“That was the year, my twenty-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every mistake, every word, all of it.”

— Joan Didion, "Goodbye To all That

The new Joan Didion Netflix documentary, The Center Will Not Hold, directed by her nephew Griffin Dunne, is at the center of a well-deserved return to the spotlight for one of our greatest American writers. Countless insightful op-eds and articles have been written about her since the documentary dropped a few weeks ago, and I've read every one I could find. Joan Didion is having a moment, and any time a writer of her import is discussed, our society is better for it. If only we spent more time discussing the written word and how much it gets at the heart of our grand, flawed condition. Can you imagine what that world would look like?

Didion's work, her writing, particularly in essays from Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album, have so dramatically impacted generations of readers like myself, on such an emotional level, that I can't help but smile in light of this pop cultural moment she's having now. For a hint at how much her work has meant to me, look at that sentence—lousy with commas and digressions. Get to the point already, right? Yet, part of why I write like this is directly linked to her influence. I'm in no way comparing my writing to hers; that would be sacrilege for even our finest writers. No, I'm simply stating that her writing, so gloriously evocative while remaining steadfastly, powerfully direct, even in its occasional meandering, has left a mark on me, and on the way I think and express myself, both verbally and in written form.

Didion is an icon to introverts, malcontents, and other assorted outsiders who struggle with feelings of inadequacy and an inability to fully express their interior lives and emotions. I count myself among them, these people, these highly sensitive self-survivalists. Like them, I sometimes feel the only way to purge my feelings is through the written word. That's what Didion has done for decades now, with extreme and often uncomfortable honesty. And by doing so, she's been our voice, especially in those times when we felt too overwhelmed by life to speak for ourselves.

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Paul SNovember 10, 2017 at 9:47 AM
Thanks to your post I've discovered a writer I have never read, never even heard of. Joan does sound right up my street, so I've just copied a transcript of "Goodbye to All That" to read over the weekend.
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