Six Things I Recently Learned About Joan Didion
The center is always falling apart
Joan Didion finally stepped back from the ongoing chaos of the world she had observed and chronicled with such elegant precision. Didion died on the day after the darkest day of 2021 — only days away from the anniversary of the fatal heart attack of her husband on December 30, 2003.
So many people have responded to the prolific writer’s death with stories of how her work impacted their lives. I felt the drag and urgency of grief and regret that I had never heard her give a reading.
I remember finding Slouching Toward Bethlehem on a shelf in a Santa Barbara bookstore because I thought it would be about WB Yeats and the poem that inspired her title.
I opened Didion’s book and read a random essay.
It had nothing to do with Yeats — like nothing I had ever read before.
Didion seemed like the female equivalent of Hemingway, a voice that drew me in and ignited me.
Didion has been essential to generations of writers and readers. Her words cut through dark and chaotic situations to make sense of them with a fragile, exacting, and sometimes-cold voice.
I notice — as I write this essay — my mind wants to link Didion’s voice to the voice of…
