Appreciating Didion’s 1968 masterpiece
Teaching requires intimate knowledge of a piece of writing, immersion in its world. When it’s great writing, this is a great pleasure. When it’s Joan Didion-circa-1968, there is almost nowhere else I’d rather be.
Although often at odds with her conclusions, I adore Didion’s word craft. At her best — and Slouching is — nobody was better.
There is also much to love in her unloveableness. She was judgmental, snobbish, frequently unkind (“writers are always selling someone out,” she noted without apology); she was pessimistic, cranky and could be disingenuous. Sometimes she seemed to care more about words than people (entirely relatable). Always, she seemed to care little what others thought of her.
Lili Anolik, author of the 2024 biography Didion & Babitz, told the Guardian
“What I like about Joan is how extremely she wanted to be a great writer,
more than she wanted anything else.”
That kind of ambition doesn’t raise an eyebrow if linked to a man, but tends to be criticized as aggressive/selfish/excessive in a woman. More power to her.
Though her detractors are often fiercer than her fans, I will always be the latter. Didion was a human version of Dickinson’s slant of light:
We can find no scar
But internal difference —
Where the meanings, are
