Issue 88: Cranky Joan Didion holds a grudge

Having fun with Joan Didion's 'Let Me Tell You What I Mean'

Joan Didion is often painted as the epitome of cool detachment. This perspective is not accidental... and nowhere more evident than her essay about Ernest Hemingway where she writes:

The very grammar of a Hemingway sentence is dictated by a certain way of looking at the world, a way of looking but not joining, a way of moving through but not attaching, a kind of romantic individualism distinctly adapted to its time and source.

She describes a favorite author but these words could have been written about her. Whether she's examining the counterculture of the 1960s, the political machinations of the 1980s, or her own grief in the 2000s, Didion's gaze never wavers. She is forever willing to look directly at what others turn away from.

And yet.