Really interesting! I’ve never read Didon (and after this month I feel like the only person who hasn’t !!!) but I’ve never come across criticism before. It is deeply unfortunate when you learn someone you look up is not as you believed them to be. I laughed at the line about her marrying an editor - touché.
It was such a roller coaster for me, I don't know if you can tell. I still LOVE a lot of her work but it's not even, for me, and some is deeply problematic. If you are curious, I would read The Year of Magical Thinking (her memoir after her husband's death) or the essay collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
“Mommy is only human.” Haha. Yes. Reminds me of a warning Lili Anolik gives readers of Didion & Babitz: reader, “don’t be a baby!” I think Joan’s contemporary, less successful friends, like Eve Babitz, felt the same way you describe, that this essay was a betrayal. In her new book, Lili Anolik takes apart the way Joan climbed, how heavily she had to lean on the men in her life to advocate for her in order to have her success she did. I don’t know if John was ever her actual official editor with a publication, but according to sources in Anolik’s book, he and Joan worked very closely that way. AND that source insinuates she married him because he, another man who had helped her get published and the one she may have truly loved, told her he’d help her career most.
I can't wait for this book. Don't be a baby is essentially what I needed to hear. Re: John... was it a meeting of the minds, was it codependency?.... Tomato/Tomahto...
Petya! I know you were struggling with the realisation that Joanie wasn't all you had hoped...I get it. I found The Women's Movement essay a bit icky, too, and the way she throws in some of the name-dropping throughout her essays can at times irk. I think you summed it up perfectly here: 'Her libertarian individualism, so beautifully suited to memoir, feels cruel when applied to politics.' I think, as we discussed separately, she may have unfortunately been one of those women who were privileged enough to make it and then drew up the drawbridge against the others. The only consolation I can offer is that, just as I found with her discussions on her 'mistakes' made as a mother in Blue Nights, the fact that she made errors of judgement in her writing makes her perhaps a little more human than the brilliant, unattainable genius we may have thought she was all along.
Yes. I think the Martha Stewart essay -- Everywoman.com -- that she wrote in the 2000s for The New Yorker was very pro-Martha and quite feminist... I suspect that her views definitely had evolved, maybe she just never got a chance to write about that or I haven't seen it yet. I am so curious to read some contemporary criticism about her but wanted to do more reading of her work first.
Cleanse your palette and right your emotional ship with a dose of Nora Ephron. Guaranteed to make you feel seen, and give you some good laughs as well.
my Didion essay is sitting half written in my drafts, so it will see the light of day next week, a bit belated. I too read The White Album but the problematic parts went right over my head. I didn't even understand some of her review essays. The part that caught me was the American crime experience. I never fail to forget that history was lived by actual people
I paired my Didion reading with some essays critical of her whitewashed, WASPy view of the world. Though I think she is one of the great American writers across multiple genres, at times I find my eyebrows raising in response to her political and social views that are apparent in some of her essays. But, man, the way her writing can just cut to the bone with the sparest prose.
Really interesting! I’ve never read Didon (and after this month I feel like the only person who hasn’t !!!) but I’ve never come across criticism before. It is deeply unfortunate when you learn someone you look up is not as you believed them to be. I laughed at the line about her marrying an editor - touché.
It was such a roller coaster for me, I don't know if you can tell. I still LOVE a lot of her work but it's not even, for me, and some is deeply problematic. If you are curious, I would read The Year of Magical Thinking (her memoir after her husband's death) or the essay collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
“Mommy is only human.” Haha. Yes. Reminds me of a warning Lili Anolik gives readers of Didion & Babitz: reader, “don’t be a baby!” I think Joan’s contemporary, less successful friends, like Eve Babitz, felt the same way you describe, that this essay was a betrayal. In her new book, Lili Anolik takes apart the way Joan climbed, how heavily she had to lean on the men in her life to advocate for her in order to have her success she did. I don’t know if John was ever her actual official editor with a publication, but according to sources in Anolik’s book, he and Joan worked very closely that way. AND that source insinuates she married him because he, another man who had helped her get published and the one she may have truly loved, told her he’d help her career most.
I can't wait for this book. Don't be a baby is essentially what I needed to hear. Re: John... was it a meeting of the minds, was it codependency?.... Tomato/Tomahto...
Petya! I know you were struggling with the realisation that Joanie wasn't all you had hoped...I get it. I found The Women's Movement essay a bit icky, too, and the way she throws in some of the name-dropping throughout her essays can at times irk. I think you summed it up perfectly here: 'Her libertarian individualism, so beautifully suited to memoir, feels cruel when applied to politics.' I think, as we discussed separately, she may have unfortunately been one of those women who were privileged enough to make it and then drew up the drawbridge against the others. The only consolation I can offer is that, just as I found with her discussions on her 'mistakes' made as a mother in Blue Nights, the fact that she made errors of judgement in her writing makes her perhaps a little more human than the brilliant, unattainable genius we may have thought she was all along.
Yes. I think the Martha Stewart essay -- Everywoman.com -- that she wrote in the 2000s for The New Yorker was very pro-Martha and quite feminist... I suspect that her views definitely had evolved, maybe she just never got a chance to write about that or I haven't seen it yet. I am so curious to read some contemporary criticism about her but wanted to do more reading of her work first.
Cleanse your palette and right your emotional ship with a dose of Nora Ephron. Guaranteed to make you feel seen, and give you some good laughs as well.
So many of my favorite reading friends have suggested that!!! I think I have one of her essay collections at home already.
Do it! I’ll sign up for that. Nora and I were classmates and (sort of) friends in college. I say sort of because I wasn’t radical enough. I am now.
PS her essays are amazing.
my Didion essay is sitting half written in my drafts, so it will see the light of day next week, a bit belated. I too read The White Album but the problematic parts went right over my head. I didn't even understand some of her review essays. The part that caught me was the American crime experience. I never fail to forget that history was lived by actual people
I paired my Didion reading with some essays critical of her whitewashed, WASPy view of the world. Though I think she is one of the great American writers across multiple genres, at times I find my eyebrows raising in response to her political and social views that are apparent in some of her essays. But, man, the way her writing can just cut to the bone with the sparest prose.