It's no secret to anyone who knows me that I think Joan Didion is one of the greatest writers of the last and current century. She writes the way I wish I could, and has an inquisitive and analytical brain that is perfectly suited to journalism. Even when she's navel-gazing she somehow elevates it to the realm of literature. I received her collected nonfiction for Christmas and have been devouring it ever since. Given what I've been going through emotionally it's the perfect antidote. Reading about El Salvador and Iran-Contra is a surefire way to put things into perspective.
I have to admit though, the voyeur in me takes the greatest pleasure in reading about her life. The Year of Magical Thinking is one of the best books I've ever read, dealing with something as difficult to describe as grief in a very detached and factual way, and yet for all of that, it got an incredibly visceral reaction out of me. Some might call Didion and Dunne's marriage suffocatingly co-dependent, but in many ways it seems rather ideal. That's what you sign up for when you marry someone, I think: a partner in everything you do. To have that ripped away in an instant, after 40 years together, has to be one of the most devastating things a human being can go through. That she chronicles the entire experience in a way that makes it seem like it could be happening to you or me is part of her genius. Her writing puts you in her shoes and that is quite a feat. If you haven't bought it, buy it now. It's a quick read despite the heavy subject matter, and well worth it.
I'd heard of Didion for years but that was my introduction to her, and now that I'm almost done with We Tell Ourselves... I find myself even more impressed by her output, skill and style. Yes, she can be a bit precious. Yes, sometimes I have no interest in what she's writing about (like the essay on how they store water in California). Despite that, I still read every word because her writing merits it. It calls for my attention.
There is something comforting in seeing bits of yourself in someone else's life, or rather, being able to glean a life lesson from what someone else has experienced, because it is similar to how you feel or have felt. Didion brings that wisdom to the table, and I have always, for better or worse, been someone who can take a lesson by proxy. There are many things that I didn't have to experience to know that I should stay away from them. Seeing the suffering that certain actions brought upon members of my family, or to friends of mine, was more than enough to discourage me from going down those roads. Some people are not like that; they need to learn their lessons the hard way. But I'm more cautious and I've never been that much of a gambler. I guess I can say that I take calculated risks. And when I take them, I know more or less what I'm getting myself into. This is not to say that my life has been lived safely because I have made a number of calculated risks that I knew might go badly, and some of them did. But in the end, I can live with those choices because I knew that I was responsible for what I was getting myself into even when I really didn't know what the hell I was doing. There is a Didion essay, "Self-Respect," that resonates with me right now, because I have realized that I have it, and it's a good thing to know, because knowing,as she puts it, "the price of things," is incredibly important. It's the saddest thing in the world to throw something away that is precious because you didn't realize its worth at the time. And it's even sadder if, upon realizing it later, you cannot remedy it because you don't have enough character, or self-respect, to back up your thoughts or words with the actions required to do so. I'm not saying that I was born with self-respect. (Trust me, I have earned that shit and have the scars to prove it.) And I don't mean to be arrogant about it, it's just that recent experiences have made me realize that I am very lucky to be the type of person Didion describes when she writes the following:
"...people with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things. If they choose to commit adultery, they do not then go running, in an access of bad conscience, to receive absolution from the wronged parties; nor do they complain unduly of the unfairness, the undeserved embarrassment, of being named co-respondent. In brief, people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called character, a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to other, more instantly negotiable virtues... character--the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life--is the source from which self-respect springs. Self-respect is something that our grandparents, whether or not they had it, knew all about. They had it instilled in them, young, a certain discipline, the sense that one lives by doing things one does not particularly want to do, by putting fears and doubts to one side, by weighing immediate comforts against the possibility of larger, even intangible, comforts... People who respect themselves are willing to accept the risk that...the liason may not turn out to be the one in which every day is a holiday because you're married to me. They are willing to invest something of themselves; they may not play at all, but when they do play, they know the odds. To have that sense of one's instrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent."
And I realized that I am also very fortunte not to be the person she describes here:
"To lack [self-respect] is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are particularly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out--since our self-image is untenable--their false notions of us... It is the phenomenon sometimes called 'alienation from self.' Without [self-respect], one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home."
Anyway, that little snippet should give you an inkling of how great Didion is, and hopefully inspire you to seek out some more the next time you're in a self-reflective mood.
