Joan and me

In an interview with Time at the start of 2021, Joan Didion was asked if she feared death. “No,” she said. Then: “Well, yes. Of course.” I found out about her death on Dec. 23 as I find out about most things these days: on Twitter.

As a J-school undergrad, Didion’s name became familiar to me. However, I didn’t fully appreciate her until a few years later, when I read The Year of Magical Thinking. To me (and many others), it’s her defining piece of work. Shortly after, I read Blue Nights. These two books interrogate death and grief, as Didion outlived both her husband and her daughter. The works directly influenced my own work as I wrote about my late father. She was my unknowing guide through the crushing fear I still have about writing me, writing my family. Didion drowns out the noise about memoir and personal essay as a dying art. Even in her death, she exemplifies its living, vibrant potential. A journalist who also wrote about herself. She turned it into theatre, even, and she was taken seriously. It is possible.

An obituary headline described Didion’s writing style as “cool detachment.” I’m not sure I agree. Then again, her work means different things to different people. How many writers voiced their feelings on that yesterday? And, as someone pointed out, Didion herself would probably hate all the corny posts. She would likely hate this blog and the fact that I’m writing it while wearing a t-shirt with her face on it. But that’s fine. Our love languages differ. I can only love her the way I love her, as others love her in their own way. I feel possessive of her, sometimes, but I didn’t own her by owning a couple of her books. None of us did.