It’s impossible to be anyone who is anything in the literary world without knowing the name Joan Didion. She’s our Beyonce. Our Meryl Streep. Our Steven Spielberg. You get it. The point is, if you want to be a writer, at some point in time, someone is going to mention Joan Didion to you. At that point, you’re left with two options: pretend to know who she is, or flounder and figure it out. Fast.
When it was my turn to have my first Joan Didion conversation, I chose the first option. It was one of my first weeks as a creative writing major at a school I was already intimidate by, and my classmates were talking about who the next Joan Didion would be. If there ever would be.
I didn’t even know there were writers famous enough to have people fighting for the title to be their successor. Still, I nodded along with everyone, tried to pick up some titles, figure out what it was, exactly, that she had written, and pretend like I thought she was a literary genius.
My Introduction to Joan Didion
That night, the first thing I did was look up Joan Didion, and memorize some of her work. I read all of The Year of Magical Thinking that weekend, just in case that conversation arose again. It didn’t, but, if it ever does, I’m prepared. Since then, I’ve been just as big a fan of Joan as the rest of the literary world. Where I Was From was my first read of the summer, and I’ve been chasing that high ever since. I hated reading it. I complained the whole way through about her excessive vocabulary, dawdling voice, and research paper sounding essays. Nonetheless, by the end of the book I knew it was my favorite read of the month. I still think about the last line. The last chapter. I’ve written two imitation essays already. It was beautiful.
My point here is that Joan Didion is as important as she is for a reason. She was a force. One of the most talented writers we’ve ever had the privilege to read. I want other people to know that. I hope other up and coming writers can learn the name, understand why we talk about her. She should never, ever, be forgotten. So I thought maybe I’d write about her, if only briefly.
Her Impact on Me
Joan Didion was a writer and journalist born in California. California became an important sense of her identity as a writer, inspiring works like Where I Was From. She’s most known for the book of essays she wrote after her husband’s death, while her daughter was critically ill: The Year of Magical Thinking. In it, she writes about the moment after she arrives home from the hospital. The moments after her husband has died: “I remember thinking that I needed to discuss this with John. There was nothing I did not discuss with John”. John, of course, was the name of her husband.
That was the first sentence of Joan’s I ever read, not because it’s the opening line of The Year of Magical Thinking, but because it’s often quoted and put online. Before I ever knew Joan, I knew that sentence. Before I had met grief, that was what I viewed to be the truest view of it all. Now, having become a bit more well acquainted with grief, it still is. There are discussions you can never have with anyone but one person. When that person is gone, the other half of that conversation becomes the wind. The rain. A stinkbug on your windowsill in the storm. Some conversations are meant for only one person’s ears. No one else could ever hear them the right way.
Her Work
The Year of Magical Thinking was published in 2005. Two years later, Joan adapted it into a play. Personally, I enjoy the original more. But that’s just me.
Although the Year of Magical Thinking is her most popular work, it’s far from her only work. Her fiction novels include Run River (1962), Play It As It Lays (1969), A Book of Common Prayer (1977), Democracy (1984) and The Last Thing He Wanted (1996). They’re all excellent, but my personal recommendation is Play It As It Lays.
She’s probably most renowned for her nonfiction. Her memoir works, aside from The Year of Magical Thinking, include Where I Was From (2004) and Blue Nights (2012). As I mentioned before, Where I Was From changed my life and will forever be my recommendation. That said, I’m not accounting for recency bias there. Her books of essays are by far her most known works. There are a lot, so bear with me here. Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968), The White Album (1979), Salvador (1983), Miami (1987), After Henry (1992), Political Fictions (2001), Fixed Ideas: America Since 9.11 (2003), South and West: From a Notebook (2017), and, finally, Let Me Tell You What I Mean (2021). It would be hard not to claim Let Me Tell You What I Mean as the standout of that bunch.
So, there you have it. A complete list of Joan Didion’s work. Do you feel like you understand her? Do you feel ready to go forth in the literary world? Attack it with your heaps of knowledge of superstar writer Joan Didion? Probably not. That’s okay. I still don’t feel equipped to talk about her. She was an extremely prolific woman, there’s no doubting that. It’s insane, to have achieved the consistently high quality she did across so much writing. Some talents really never can be replicated (just like Beyonce).
I love Joan Didion. I love talking about her. Somehow, I still will never, ever, understand her. She’s the sort of person we get every few lifetimes.
