Didion – let me tell you what I mean – Review

Compared to other collections of Joan Didion's articles and essays, The White Album, Slouching towards Bethlehem, expressing her political and cultural revelations about the '60s and 70's, this most current, never before amalgam of pieces beginning in 1968, and ending in 2000, focuses mainly on the topic of her writing, publishing and the craft of writing itself.

For many readers, the process of writing, told from the great writers themselves is a possible insight into their craft and their success. In her article, Last Words, Didion writes about Ernest Hemingway, and begins the piece with a quote from the first paragraph of his masterpiece, A Farewell to Arms. She writes:

That paragraph, which was published in 1929, bears examination: four deceptively simple sentences, 126 words, the arrangement of which remains as mysterious and thrilling to me now as it did when I first read them, at twelve or thirteen, and imagine that I studied them closely enough and practiced hard enough I might one day arrange 126 such words myself.

The article describes how Hemingway didn't want his voluminous correspondence to be published or his unfinished work. His widow and executor, Mary Welsh Hemingway, despite her misgivings, decided to release them anyway. Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letter, 1917-1961. The last Hemingway novel, never published in his lifetime, True at First Light, was edited by Hemingway's son, Patrick. He claimed he limited his editing to condensing, but Didion writes, (which inevitably works to alter what the author may have intended, as anyone who has been condensed know)...(p.118) Generally, her argument is an unfinished Mss (manuscript) completed by another will ultimately lose the author's vision and intent. Particularly when reading Hemingway, even removing a comma or a 'and' or a 'but' would destroy the writers' voice, cadence, and tone.

In her essay, Telling Stories, she expounds on her evolving a process as a novel writer and her great personal dislike for writing the short story. At 19 years of age, while attending Berkeley, Didion entered a writer's workshop, Mark Schorer's English 106A. Over the term of the semester, the students were required to write five short stories. Didion ended up only writing three but managed to receive a 'B' for her trouble. She goes on to describe her fellow classmates, all much older, experienced, and interesting, while she had only scratched the surface of her life. In the end, she communicates well as to why she will never be a short story writer but a novelist.

In one of her somewhat caustic and personally honest accounts of her experience when sitting in on a Gamblers Anonymous meeting. Getting Serenity reports on the members' communications as addicts (Didion never uses the word addict) and their insular celebratory rituals to remain 'sober' from gambling. Something struck a negative chord in the young woman when a member mentions the word “serenity”:

Well there it was. I got out fast then before anyone could say “serenity.” again, for it is a word I associate with death, and for several days after the meeting, I wanted only to be in places where the lights were bright, and no one counted days.

This collection of 12 articles and essays shows us, Joan Didion, as a novice writing for Vogue, exploring possibilities, her evolving view about fiction, culture, herself as a woman and her pointed insights about the world. A enjoyable read.