Like Johnny Rotten said during their last (in the universe where they never would re-form again in the mid-90's) show, "Do you ever feel like you've been cheated?"
I do Johnny, I do.
I feel cheated by this book. I bought it because it cost me a dollar. I wasn't interested in it that much. I finally picked it up to read because I wanted to write a review about how pathetic and whiny it was. I thought I'd say something about how now that baby-boomers are starting to kick the bucket they want a fucking monopoly on death too, as if they invented grieving and no one before them could have possibly grieved like they do. Or maybe point out that we really don't need another memoir about someone dying and the way that the surviving family member found some shallow platitude to be true and now feels the need to share it. (i.e., "Everyone said life goes on, but I had to cry for awhile and then write a three hundred page book making it seem like I was the first person in the history of the whole world to have a parent die before realizing that 'hey it's true', and life does go on especially with the nice advance I got from the book deal. Thank you Random House!!")
But no, I don't get to attack Joan Didion. And part of me so wanted to. Instead of finding her whiny, or annoying, or exploitive or whatever I find that I have quite a bit of respect for her.
Other's apparently have had trouble with some of the name dropping that Didion does. Yes she does a lot of name dropping, her and her late husbands friends happen to be house-hold names (if you're household is bookish, maybe yours isn't, and there is nothing wrong with that). And maybe she does name drop the names of expensive hotels and restaurants she normally at in with her John Gregory Dunne, and maybe some people would rather have elaborate descriptions of the decor of these places then her just saying she ate there, or details about what so-and-so said at her husbands funeral, and not just that he or she spoke at it. But that's missing the point and if she had done that I would have been or so happy because I'd be writing a review right now about the banality of memoirs and their narcissistic egoism that only serves to make the author and publisher some dollars.
Instead Didion is really investigating and putting to paper the way that memory and perception work under the duress of grief. The snapshots of memory of a loved one don't necessarily contain any details about the table clothes of a favorite restaurant, but the place itself, it's name where it was located is a memory land mine of the deceased, waiting to go off and spiral out to other memories at it's mere mention.
This book deals with the irrational element of grief so well. It captures the mundane little things that can emotionally paralyze a person, and it's written from that place which our society would rather not acknowledge and that people should 'just get over', and there is no happy ending to the book, there is no climatic cathartic moment.
I've lost where I was going I think. Oh well.

Couldn't finish -- too sad. I know, I know, we all die. But this is where I could have used a lot more breast beating, more not so clinical stuff. This is a good argument for why fiction is essential, how it gives context & color...

Click here to hear my thoughts on this book over on my Booktube channel, abookolive.

A National Book Award-winner, this book is Didion’s personal memoir of the year following the death of her husband, writer John Dunne. Didion lays out her thought processes and emotions and struggle for normalcy after Dunne passes away suddenly one night at the dinner table from a heart problem. I didn’t find this book nearly as good as the hype would lead me to believe. The NY Times review called it an "indelible portrait of loss and grief." The NY Review of Books said "I can’t imagine dying without this book." For me, it earned none of the preceding words of praise. Books on grief have been done much better, including one referenced multiple times throughout Didion’s book (A Grief Observed by CS Lewis is far superior). I am absolutely convinced that the only reason Didion’s book received such notably positive press was because she and her husband were good friends with all these reviewers and the rest of the literary community, having bonded with these people at dinner parties on the Upper East Side in smoking jackets with martinis and cigars; Didion and Dunne were part of the NYC writing establishment Didion’s prose throughout is tight and reminiscent of early Vonnegut (his self-referencing style, not his humor), but there is an emotional distance in her writing. She quotes numerous studies on grief throughout the book, having spent the months following the tragedy not only grieving but studying grief. But the research studies don’t serve to illuminate her grief; they serve to distance us from her grief. Secondly, Didion lived a very upper-crust NY life, and the way she describes the events she will miss doing (dining at Morton’s with her husband, walking on the Jardin du Ranelagh in Paris with her husband, skipping the Monet exhibit to dine at Conti’s with her husband) further distances me from Didion’s grief. Personally, I don’t find rich people experiencing tragedy as tragic as I would find average people experiencing tragedy. I found this too emotionally detached to recommend it.

With the recent passing of Joan Didion, I felt drawn to reading The Year of Magical Thinking where she captures her grief of the untimely passing of her husband, John, and her daughter, Quintana.

What she went through is indescribable.

Our local library sale newsletter had mentioned that this was one of the featured acquisitions for the day’s sale and thus I ventured out in the cold morning rain. I was first in the queue and texted a friend that such was evidence of my revolutionary zeal, though my particular revolution was relatively sad and largely solitary.

My wife and I returned from a pleasant late lunch. I received a text noting that an aunt had passed away. My immediate thought, why do we text such things? After reflecting for a while I sat here in this chair, listening to Lester Young and Willie Nelson and read the book without stirring.

I appreciated the reference to Sylvia Plath on page 179. Otherwise I found this to be a Montaigne for white people.

'It had seemed to me on the day in Quintana’s room at Presbyterian when I read the final proof for Nothing Lost that there might be a grammatical error in the last sentence of the passage about J.J. McClure and Teresa Kean and the tornado. I never actually learned the rules of grammar, relying instead only on what sounded right, but there was something here that I was not sure sounded right. The sentence in the last-pass galleys read: “It was as close a declaration of love as J.J. was capable of making.” I would have added a preposition: “It was as close to a declaration of love as J.J. was capable of making.”

I sat by the window and watched the ice floes on the Hudson and thought about the sentence. It was as close a declaration of love as J.J. was capable of making. It was not the kind of sentence, if you had written it, you would want wrong, but neither was it the kind of sentence, if that was the way you had written it, you would want changed. How had he written it? What did he have in mind? How would he want it? The decision was left to me. Any choice I made could carry the potential for abandonment, even betrayal. That was one reason I was crying in Quintana’s hospital room. When I got home that night I checked the previous galleys and manuscripts. The error, if it was an error, had been there from the beginning. I left it as it was.

Why do you always have to be right.

Why do you always have to have the last word.

For once in your life just let it go.'

Personal and universal wisdom of grief and loss of a beloved husband of forty years. Written from the heart, but understood with the exquisite mind of Ms. Didion. Presented with the eyes looking back to capture the memories of a loving relationship, and forward to the future with life's challenges.

A remarkable read.

What a downer of a book. What a name-dropper of a book. I had a hard time feeling anything for this lady. The book was filled with quotes or summaries of different articles the author had come across about coping with death, never any personal emotions she may have been going through, which made it so hard to care. She dropped names of all the intellectual people her and her husband ran with, all the intellectual activities they did, that by the time I was finished reading this, I had never felt so underpriveleged. I found this book very hard to relate to on so many levels

ANCHE PIÙ CHE UN GIORNO DI PIÙ



Quando terminò la cerimonia ci recammo nella villetta di Pebble Beach. C’erano degli stuzzichini, dello champagne, una terrazza aperta sul Pacifico, una cosa molto semplice. Per la luna di miele passammo qualche notte in bungalow del ranch San Ysidro di Montecito e poi, annoiati, fuggimmo al Beverly Hills Hotel.

Ce la farà una persona che scrive queste cose, con questo tono, ce la farà a trasmettere il suo dolore, il senso della sua perdita, a risultare empatica…?


Joan Didion e il marito John Gregory Dunne, nato a Hartford; Connecticut, il 25 maggio 1932, morto a New York il 30 dicembre 2003.

Oh, se ce la farà!
Ce la fa, senza alcun dubbio, ce l’ha fatta: il suo libro è un colpo alla parte più sensibile del lettore, senza trascurare quella più cognitiva. Joan Didion è probabilmente snob, forse anche insopportabilmente snob: ma ha rara intelligenza e sensibilità e scrive da dio.

Quaranta anni insieme, 24 ore al giorno: perché moglie e marito sono scrittori e sceneggiatori e giornalisti – a volte lavorano insieme allo stesso film, per lo più ciascuno porta avanti la sua scrittura – ma lui è il primo lettore di lei, e viceversa – il primo lettore di una nuova opera, ma anche semplicemente di un articolo di giornale, di un pensiero, un’annotazione. Tra John e Joan lo scambio è continuo, quotidiano, insistito, profondo. Lei non ha conservato lettere di lui: semplicemente perché non si sono mai scritti - stavano sempre insieme, non ce n’era motivo – durante le rare separazioni, le salate bollette del telefono sostituivano la corrispondenza.
Per quaranta anni, 24 ore al giorno.


Didion e Dunne, moglie e marito, insieme scrissero la sceneggiatura di ‘Panico a Needle Park’, ‘È nata una stella’, ‘L’assoluzione’.

Poi, una sera, in un attimo, patatrac, lui se ne va: improvvisamente smette di parlare, non risponde a una domanda di lei, cade per terra ed è già morto.
[La figlia da qualche giorno è ricoverata in terapia intensiva, inizio di una lunga malattia che la vedrà in ospedale per mesi, morire un anno e mezzo dopo].

Joan inizia a leggere qualsiasi cosa che riesca a trovare sulla morte: medicina, psicanalisi, psichiatria, scienze naturali, storia delle culture, letteratura, mitologia…
Questo libro è ovviamente il tentativo di Didion di elaborare il suo lutto, di affrontare assenza e perdita del marito.
Ma, prima di tutto, è una dichiarazione d’amore, perché racconta una magnifica storia d’amore.



Didion racconta i fatti nei dettagli, attenta alla cronologia, ripercorrendola più e più volte; esamina il suo sentire come un anatomopatologo; cita opere sue e altrui; ma anche letteratura medica della quale diventa esperta; e referti, anamnesi, terapie; fa ricerche su Google, prende in mano poesie, ricorda canzoni, ripercorre la sua vita, rivive ricordi, ripassa la memoria…
La razionalità del suo raccontare, dell’uso dei dettagli, e della cronologia dei fatti, delle cose che bene o male compie, si conserva: questa razionalità si sovrappone all’irrazionalità dell’ostinato desiderio di chi non c’è più, di abolire la morte, cancellare la perdita, annullare l’assenza, fermare il tempo, riavvolgerlo, riviverlo, duplicarlo…


Joan Didion e Vanessa Redgrave che ha portato sul palcoscenico la versione teatrale di questo memoir.

Questo è il pensiero magico (in realtà, il pensiero ipnotico) che dura un anno più un giorno, dal 30 dicembre 2003 fino al 31 dicembre 2004, quando Joan si accorge che un anno è già passato, per specchiare l’oggi nello ieri insieme a John deve usare un’agenda di più: e questo piccolo sforzo in più è già il segno dell’inizio dell’accettazione del cambiamento.

Quando Didion inizia a scrivere questo libro, John è morto da nove mesi.
Quando lo pubblica, nell’agosto del 2005, sua figlia è morta da due mesi.
Joan non cambia il racconto, l’anno del pensiero magico è finito, alla figlia dedica un libro che scriverà anni dopo, “Blue Nights”.

È stata descritta come una personalità raffinata, sofisticata, tagliente: qui, Joan Didion sa mettersi a nudo con raro coraggio e sincerità, sa mostrare i tormenti della sua anima restando intelligente profonda elegante, dotata di una scrittura che spacca.



PS
Di quest’opera esiste un adattamento teatrale a opera della stessa Didion, portato in scena da Vanessa Redgrave.

PPSS
Ti amerò anche più che un giorno di più, dice Audrey Hepburn-Marian a Sean Connery-Robin Hood in una delle scene più struggenti della mia personale storia del cinema. E così dice il padre, che di cinema si era sempre nutrito nel senso più letterale, alla figlia stesa sul letto della rianimazione lasciandola per tornare a casa. Poche ore prima di morire.

Pe cînd stau la masă, într-o seară, după ce și-au vizitat fiica, Quintana Roo, la spital, soțul lui Joan Didion se prăbușește fără suflare. O moarte subită, vor declara medicii.

Oare în ce constă „gîndirea magică”, menționată de Joan Didion în titlul acestui volum?

Am impresia că se referă la două lucruri. Cel dintîi este convingerea că seria întîmplărilor care se închide cu moartea subită a unui om e reversibilă. Dacă există moarte, există și posibilitatea de a o anula. Moartea nu poate fi ceva definitiv. Firește, cei care nu au fost afectați (deocamdată) de sfîrșitul unei persoane apropiate nu cred asta. Ideea e irațională.

Întreaga istorie a omenirii atestă definitivul morții. Nu putem cere, totuși, celor care au suferit o pierdere să gîndească exact ca noi. Pentru a depăși suferința, e nevoie, probabil, tocmai de această gîndire „magică”. Joan Didion notează: „Cu toate astea, eu nu eram deloc pregătită să accept vestea asta ca definitivă: la un anumit nivel credeam că ceea ce s-a întîmplat rămăsese reversibil: there was a level on which I believed that what had happened remained reversible”.

Al doilea lucru care ține de această gîndire „alterată, magică” este credința „supraviețuitorului” că faptul morții cuiva ar fi putut fi evitat. Nimeni nu moare din senin. Moartea poate fi subită (ca în cazul de față), dar ea este anunțată de niște semne premonitorii. Totul e să le sesizezi și să le citești corect. Privind retroactiv, lui Joan Didion i se pare că, în multe împrejurări, a fost „oarbă” sau, cel puțin, neglijentă. Ar fi trebuit să-și dea seama că niște fulgere de culoare roșie (pe care le-a zărit într-o seară) îi anunțau, de fapt, un eveniment funest. Dacă ar fi priceput sensul lor, soțul ei, John Gregory Dunne, ar mai fi în viață.

Cînd moare un om, spune gîndirea magică, singurul vinovat e cel care rămîne...

“Una mosca indefensa queda atrapada accidentalmente en una telaraña pegajosa. El insecto propietario de aquel entramado aparece casi imperceptible, no por su tamaño (ya que es gigante), si no porque lo hace astutamente de manera silenciosa. Inyecta su veneno a la mosca y ésta queda rendida a su ponzoña. Unos minutos más tarde la mosca es deglutida por la araña. No se sabe por qué, pero para la mosca ha sido una muerte hermosa.”

Yo soy la mosca y Joan es la araña. He quedado rendido a su ponzoña. Me he dejado morir de una manera hermosa. “El año del pensamiento mágico” es una hermosa telaraña.