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Joan Didion.
Everyone who speaks “in conversation” at the New York Public Library is asked for a seven word bio. “Seven words that define you.”
Joan Didion’s seven words were, “seven words do not yet define me.”
Her most recent book, Blue Nights, is about the death of her daughter. She said it was hard to write, but not because of the content. It was hard to write because it needed a new rhythm, one she had never used before. She said she had to make up the rhythm as she went along.
Sloane Crosley, who interviewed Joan Didion on stage, suggested that the new rhythm was “more like jazz.” Didion agreed.
Writing about her daughter’s death was not cathartic, she said. She wrote about it because it was “a thing that happened.”
Crosley asked Joan Didion how she “mixed” her grief over the events in the book with the frank and brutal process of writing the book. She said she did not “mix” it. The two things could exist at once. She said the work that she did about her life was in some ways separate from her life.
Blue Nights is considered a memoir, which is not a word that Joan Didion likes. She said, “I don’t know what it was, but memoir seemed the most soft to me.”
Crosley asked her about her writing process. She said she wrote the book during the day. At night, she had a drink — bourbon then, though it is now white wine — and then she “marked up the page.” In the morning, she looked at the marks and make more final edits. “The drink helps,” she said.
Crosley asked her about her use of very specific details. She said that without them, the writing “just kind of floated there.” Without the details, she said, you have a memoir.
Crosley asked her if writing details was intuitive, or if she had to learn to write them. She said, “You always have to teach yourself everything.”
An audience member told Joan Didion that his father had recently passed away. He wondered why she would write Blue Nights if the writing was not cathartic.
“In order to understand it, I have to write about it,” she said. “A lot of writers have that failing.”
Jealous you saw “J.Dids” in the flesh.
How the fuck did SLOANE CROSLEY get the job of interviewing Joan Didion?! I like her, but only in the sense that she feels like the friend you meet up with once or twice a year because they have the good stories.
Yeah, the one who you only meet once a year because she has the good stories but in order to get them you have the put up with the namedropping and the forced appearance of nonchalance…
I’ll stop there.
She was unqualified and it showed.
EXACTLY. It really irks me that you can tell she thinks she’s REALLY FUCKING FUNNY and seriously, no funnier than you or I. She’s clever, but not like, touched by god clever. She’s self deprecating because that’s funny now but it’s like you can visualize her flipping her hair and smirking as she does so. She just excels incredibly at being deceptively average.