Where Have I Been?

Joan Didion

It’s one of the best aspects of reading. You can read for a long, long time and still discover an author that makes you wonder how you've missed her for so long.  Joan Didion is not exactly an obscure writer, but nonetheless I’ve managed to avoid reading her. Granted she’s not so popular in New York where I lived most of my life.  But having moved to California, several  readers here have recommended her works as serious and worthwhile. So I picked up The White Album.  Very glad I did.

The White Album is a collection of non-fiction magazine pieces (published in 1979) by the relatively young Didion.  For me it’s a new kind of non-fiction that combines traditional non-fiction, memoir, and many techniques from fiction to make a unique style.  It’s both intensely personal and strictly objective.  No real argument presented, at least not explicity. Just multifaceted takes on some important themes, including the late 60’s, the 50’s, California as a place, technology, feminism, and the personal vs. the collective.

I won’t dwell on specifics here, but suffice it to say that I’ve never read anything more insightful on any of the above topics.  She has a wonderful way of coming at a subject from a number of different angles, all personal, all intensely felt, and all telling.  It’s up to the reader to try to assemble those takes into something coherent.  In some cases it’s not possible, and that’s OK.  It’s a curiously creative approach to non-fiction: impressions, ideas, feeling, all presented as strong but divergent vectors that may or may not add up. It’s Didion’s way of portraying complexity, and it borrows from fiction writers who use different characters (even different narrators) to present divergent views of the same events. Didion manages this in the realm of non-fiction.  The kaleidoscope keeps turning, and the views are striking.

Mark di Suvero sculpture in San Francisco

One might expect that just about anything published on these topics in 1979 wouldn't have much relevance today.  Think again.  These pieces will last for a long time; each is filtered through an intensely personal lens. She presents a series of vectors which precariously balance each other and contribute to a shimmering whole. In the long run we learn more about Didion than about the subject at hand, and I wish I had the opportunity to know her personally in those times.  Well maybe not.  I wouldn’t have been up to the challenge.  I’m grateful to know her through her writing.