Joan didion

In Notes to John, Joan Didion’s ostensibly private record of three years’ therapy under psychiatrist Dr. Roger MacKinnon – one memory troubles her a great deal. When her daughter Quintana Roo Dunne was about seven, they watched the (wholly unsuitable) Night of the Living Dead, before Didion insisted Quintana accompany her to the kitchen at midnight. She pretended to be afraid for herself, but really she worried the glass doors of the living room made Quintana vulnerable to intruders. Reading this book sometimes feels like being the imagined predator lurking in the dark: we catch only a slice of the illuminated interior, and Didion behaves as if she isn’t being seen. By the end of 1999, Quintana, who was 33, had reached a new crisis point in her struggle with alcoholism.

On December 23, 2021, I left the Hollywood Roosevelt and walked down North Orange Drive to turn right and face Sunset Boulevard. It was dark when I passed the entrance to the Chateau Marmont. When I finally crossed the street to arrive at Book Soup, the “Bookseller To The Great & Infamous,” I turned to the cashier and asked if they had copies of Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion. He huffed, “Uh, yeah, we’re sold out.” Joan Didion had died earlier that day in Manhattan due to complications of Parkinson’s Disease.

I am convinced that the sweet-smelling tycoons that run candle-making companies must have read too much Proust when they were younger. With scents like “Inspire,” “Bohemia,” and “Sunny Daydream,” they cannot be aiming for something as cheap and transitory as mere tawdry olfactory pleasure. They must have become all but obsessed by À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, and be aiming for something akin to his narrator’s nostalgic odyssey upon tasting a madeleine: “and at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory.” Rather pretentious, oui — but what other excuse can there be for a candle that proclaims it can smell like a cool library at midnight, or the depths of some dreamy reverie?

When asked what they knew about Joan Didion, a not insignificant number of people might mention her famous essay "Slouching Towards Bethlehem." It is the eponymous essay of Didion’s 1968 collection, the first non-fiction collection of her career. The essay ends with the oft-repeated description of Susan, a five-year-old in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. She wants a bicycle for Christmas, likes ice cream, Coca-Cola, and the beach — and gets high on acid. Didion describes the domestic setup, and her own discomfort: she "falter[s] at the key words" when asking her if she has other friends on drugs. Didion immortalized the scene of Sixties freedom gone wrong; there is no utopia here. Other Didion fans might be drawn to her essay "Goodbye to All That.