On Keeping a Notebook
Yes, yes, Joan Didion, and goodbye and hello to all that
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In her now-legendary essay “On Keeping a Notebook,” Joan Didion writes:
Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.
And later:
How it felt to me: that is getting closer to the truth about a notebook. I sometimes delude myself about why I keep a notebook, imagine that some thrifty virtue derives from preserving everything observed.
Didion is adamant that it’s not a diary and that it may be full of lies. But ultimately it’s about “keeping in touch” with oneself. I like all of this. I was once a big Didion fan. I still love her for all that she opened up for personal essayists. I don’t find her to be a journalist at all, but that’s okay.
