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Saint Joan: Young Women And The Cult Of Didion
Is It Time To Stop Listing "Best" Books?
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"I Don't Wish To Touch Hearts..."

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whynotshesaid
11/19/09

In reply to Saint Joan: Young Women And The Cult Of Didion
I really got into Joan Didion in my mid-20s, right as I was starting journalism school, and she is one of the handful of writers whose style makes appearances in my own writing. I have read nearly everything she's written. While I tend to appreciate her more from an intellectual and stylistic point of view, some of her stuff has had a very powerful emotional impact on me, particularly her essay "On Self-Respect," which I read shortly after I left my ex-husband and our abusive relationship. Her words so clearly illuminated the fact that I conducted my life the way I did because I lacked self-respect, because I was constantly searching for validation outside of myself and always coming up short. I can hardly think of another piece of writing - perhaps "Of Human Bondage" by Somerset Maugham? - that had such a profound impact on who I am as a person.

That said, I don't really understand the hero worship aspect the writer is referring to. I know it exists with some, and I think it can be attributable to what Didion's career represents - that a talented, smart, somewhat flawed young woman can become one of the most important figures in American letters. I am hardpressed to think of another woman who occupies such a place in our culture. It's not really all that different from generations who idolized Kerouac or Salinger or whoever. They don't just represent their own literary and cultural achievements, but also what is possible for others. So if I had to guess I would say that might be part of what is going on here. But then again, I am not the kind of person who is often starstruck or sent into tears by the mere presence of another person, no matter how much I admire their work.
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girlscoutcookie is back from hiatus
11/18/09

In reply to Saint Joan: Young Women And The Cult Of Didion
I couldn't make it through The Year of Magical Thinking. Couldn't even make it through the first chapter. Too hard. But my mom read it, and our conversation about it made me realize that it's something that maybe I'll only be able to read after my parents are gone, because now that's a vague idea I don't want to consider possible, but then it'll be a concrete reality I will already have faced. I don't know. What I did read just broke my heart.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem, though. Amazing from start to finish. Especially the one about Joan Baez.

Plus, Joan Didion was in my sorority, which is my favorite thing about my sorority, because of how she's awesome.
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Trulymadlyme
11/18/09

@girlscoutcookie is back from hiatus: Especially the one about Joan Baez.

Especially since her observation about Baez would apply to Obama. That is what is interesting about her writing.
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hughman
11/18/09

In reply to Saint Joan: Young Women And The Cult Of Didion
joan didion was one of my writer idols in high school (another was oriana fallaci). i was a gay boy in the south and it was the 70s. needless to say, my parents thought i was crazy. and thus i moved away as soon as i graduated.
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Trulymadlyme
11/18/09

In reply to Saint Joan: Young Women And The Cult Of Didion
I didn't expect to like her writing. In fact, I absolutely hated "Play It As It Lays." But right around the time when I was 28, single, living in the city, partying a shit ton, working a job where I was well paid, but unfulfilled, I randomly stumbled onto "Goodbye to All That" and realized exactly what was happening to me and what happened to me the previous ten years because the essay's observations were just so fucking spot on and clear. The fact that she wrote it in 1968 and I read it in 2008, still shocks me. I don't see writing like that much anymore.
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Edited by Trulymadlyme at 11/18/09 4:59 PM Trulymadlyme was starred Trulymadlyme was unstarred

L'Adelina
11/19/09

@Trulymadlyme: "Goodbye to All That" is one of the most perfect essays she's ever written. I read it first my freshman year of college and loved it, but didn't really get it until I re-read it six years later, and wow, it is shocking how well it still reads.
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SarahHeartburn
11/18/09

In reply to Saint Joan: Young Women And The Cult Of Didion
I love and admire her too, but I hope she lives long enough to write a "get the fuck offa me awready" response. Or something like that.
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TRexstasy
11/18/09

In reply to Saint Joan: Young Women And The Cult Of Didion
St. Joan the Unblinking has risen to the top of my personal canon of great writers over the last year. No one, male or female, looks at our American lives with such keen penetration, such ruthless attention to detail, and yet produces so much real beauty, devoid of sentiment and put-on pathos. Joan Didion is the Bomb Freakin Diggity. Any of us would be blessed to write a tenth as well.
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AnnieSaBu
11/18/09

@TRexstasy: Hear hear. Her sentences are so precise and beautiful that they seem almost familiar, even as you marvel at the achievement. It's like, "how did no one think to put it that way before?"
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sybann
11/18/09

In reply to Saint Joan: Young Women And The Cult Of Didion
Writers never write for us. Good artists produce because they must.
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BlueJeans
11/18/09

@sybann: I agree with the second statement, but I don't think the first is necessarily true. I agree that artists -- real artists -- have to produce, but I also believe that the creation of art is a social phenomena as well as the manifestation of a personal drive and aptitude. And perhaps not with all artists, but many do write for an audience, even if in a broad sense.
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sybann
11/19/09

@BlueJeans: Correction: writers who ARE artists don't... there are lots of folks who produce things for an audience and sometimes it IS art. But not always.
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BlueJeans
11/20/09

@sybann: Derek Walcott? Seamus Heaney? There's almost an entire school of thought in poetry that deals with navigating the personal as well as the cultural and is consciously about a heritage. Walcott was absolutely writing for the Caribbean. And what about theater? And film? Horror film? I think the audience is, for many artists, an important factor in creation.
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PilgrimSoul
11/18/09

In reply to Saint Joan: Young Women And The Cult Of Didion
Am I weird? I love Didion's writing, but I in no way flatter myself to claim I know her. I hadn't realized she was of some particular amazingness to young women, though I'm Canadian and my literary idols tend more in the direction of Alice Munro.

I just... I find her writing sardonic and sharp, and the way she's described here, it's not recognizable to me.
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AnnieSaBu
11/18/09

@PilgrimSoul: These are my thoughts too, except that I do consider Didion to be my favorite writer. And yet I don't idolize her as a person or imagine that I know her. It's not worship of Joan Didion, it's love of her work. It's actually hard for me to imagine a "mother figure" or "bedroom saint" emerging from behind her steely prose. I do understand how the Year of Magical Thinking, as an account of her emotional life, might have led to some blurring between the art and the artist, but not more so than any other autobiographer.
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bluebears
11/18/09

@PilgrimSoul: I don't feel I know her. Part of what I love about her is that she's able to write about culture or even herself (Year of Magical Thinking) in such a penatrating way and yet I feel like what she shares with the world is only the first few layers of her onion, if you will.

eta: I do idolize her though (as much as someone my age can idolize any stranger)
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Edited by bluebears at 11/18/09 5:15 PM bluebears was starred bluebears was unstarred

girlscoutcookie is back from hiatus
11/18/09

@PilgrimSoul: I love Alice Munro SO MUCH. She's more accessible to me than Joan Didion, though I admire them both; Munro's work is more the style of my own (the day a few weeks ago when my creative writing teacher compared a piece of mine to Munro's was the proudest day of my career thus far). I could never do creative nonfiction like Didion.
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Plum-Pie
11/18/09

@PilgrimSoul: I read her for the first time earlier this year (I'm 29) and I think I'm too old for her work to make a major dent. I'm not shocked by what she does or how (well) she does it.
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Trulymadlyme
11/19/09

@Plum-Pie: Even Goodbye to All That? I found her at 28 and holy hell it was the absolute right point.
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Plum-Pie
11/19/09

@Trulymadlyme: OK, I will try that one. I'm not dismissing her talent and she was already on my 'to read more of, at some point' list. But, as the 'What am I doing with my life? What's really important to me?'-type questions are pretty much resolved in my life (currently), it's been a few years since a book really shook me up emotionally or morally.

#tips
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whynotshesaid
11/19/09

@AnnieSaBu: These are my thoughts exactly. I also consider Didion to be my favorite writer (my handle comes from "Play It As It Lays"), but it's not because I think I know her or worship her or anything like that. It's because her writing is so precise, like a scalpel, and also because she is enormously intelligent and clear-thinking. (Aside: I'm reading David Foster Wallace's collection of essays and he reminds me a lot of her, albeit with more profanity and a slightly coarser sensibility, but no less penetrating in his insights.)

I don't really understand hero worship, unless by "hero worship" you mean wishing you could emulate someone's career and admiring their work intensely. But holding a copy of her book and crying while listening to her speak? I don't get that at all.
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clevernamehere
11/06/09

In reply to Is It Time To Stop Listing "Best" Books?
I think the people who complied the list need to really, really examine their bias.

I cannot believe that 70% of books are written by men. I'd guess the ratio is more like 60f/40m although that may just be my reading habits.

Assuming that it is a 50/50 split in gender, the odds of the entire list being male by chance are 1 in 1024. Obviously a best books list is based on skill, not chance but the numbers suggest a flat out bias. #booklists
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Rooo sez BISH PLZ
11/06/09

In reply to Is It Time To Stop Listing "Best" Books?
This is just ... so obvious to me. Why does it never occur to these supposedly top-of-the-food-chain-esque literary critics that the very foundation of their critical methodology -- as well as the pedagogy which shapes the methodology -- is informed by these very same prejudices?

I mean, duh. You go to the Oxford University reading list and, year after year, you see the very same 18th and 19th English authors held up as classics.
Dusty, musty, rusty, fusty. Never a difference. Nothing from Asia. Nothing from Africa. Nothing from Iceland. Or Norway. Nothing from the 20th damn century, even.

The only conclusion I can come to is that they get it and just don't give a damn. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is even more of a reason to just completely invalidate their "lists."

Just -- don't designate your critiques the mostest wellest-informedest of the well-informed the next time if you can't see past your own noses, Cri-Tee-Kays, okay?

/mini-rant #booklists
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LBB
11/06/09

In reply to Is It Time To Stop Listing "Best" Books?
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Edited by LBB at 11/06/09 3:46 PM LBB was starred LBB was unstarred

TheGintheCity
11/06/09

In reply to Is It Time To Stop Listing "Best" Books?
Upfront, I do think it's ridiculous that there isn't single a woman on this list.

However, from a purely "publishing person" perspective, if I completely ignore the gender issues, I'm impressed by this list. There's a good mix of different publishers (as opposed to say, last year's NYT top 10 list, out of which 8 books were published by one imprint). There's a mix of fiction/nonfiction/stories/graphic novels. These books are not your average bestseller list fare. I've read "Lost City of Z" and "Jeff in Venice" and loved both, and the Chaon is at the top of my "to read next" list.

This is tricky, because as a woman who knows a LOT about books, I'm outraged. But I'm also just really glad that people are reading anything. #booklists
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LBB
11/06/09

@TheGintheCity: What about the genre issues? There's a mix of different formats, but the list appears to be of the "lyrical writing about miserable topics" type, even the graphic novel... and I refuse to believe that there wasn't outstanding, best-of-the-year-worthy work in genre fiction this year. The comment in the article about how there was an outcry for a science fiction title seemed disingenuous to me, as though they want to head off criticisms of how Literary the list is. #booklists
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TheGintheCity
11/06/09

@LBB: This is tricky for me to comment on, because I'm not a fan of genre lit.

However, I DO agree with you that in 2009, when one of the most "buzzy" books of the year was Pride & Prejudice and Zombies, this list warrants a nod or two to genre.

(Also, FWIW, I disagree with you a bit about the "miserable topics" thing. Jeff in Venice is sexy and satirical, and even laugh-out-loud hilarious in parts, and Lost City of Z is a straight-up, balls-out adventure tale.)
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Edited by TheGintheCity at 11/06/09 4:23 PM TheGintheCity was starred TheGintheCity was unstarred

clevernamehere
11/06/09

@TheGintheCity: I don't think this is a victory for reading. It is an industry list published in an industry publication. The Amazon bestseller list is more of a vistory for reading since it involved actual people buying actual books. #booklists
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hfree
11/06/09

In reply to Is It Time To Stop Listing "Best" Books?
Wolf Hall, written by Hilary Mantel, won this year's Booker Prize. The Children's Book, by AS Byatt, and The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters, were short-listed. I'm not saying that the Booker Prize is the authority on the best books (especially as it is self selecting to Commonwealth nations), nor that all readers have the same tastes, but it is seen as reputable book list. It found plenty of women writers, what was Publisher's Weekly's problem? #booklists
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TheGintheCity
11/06/09

@hfree: I just have to comment that I'm 100 pages into The Children's Book and it is a-mazing. But I love AS Byatt, and not everyone does. #booklists
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hfree
11/06/09

@TheGintheCity: I'm glad to hear it. I love her writing as well. I picked it up from the library but it was a 14 day book and I knew it would take me longer to tackle it (Possession beat me up the first time I read it). #booklists
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TheGintheCity
11/06/09

@hfree: I'm finding this easier than Possession. Rather than long passages of poetry to muddle through, this one has eerie, creepy, awesome fairy tales. #booklists
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Diziet_Sma
11/06/09

@TheGintheCity: I'm about 100 pages from the end, I've never read anything by her before, and I second that!
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Diziet_Sma
11/06/09

@hfree: That's exactly what I was going to say. Of course, the Booker is only the most prestigious book award in the world, so what do they know? #booklists
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Dodgergirl
11/06/09

In reply to Is It Time To Stop Listing "Best" Books?
"What we like" is always going to have biases. It's about personal taste and judgment. It's really stupid to try to deny that, and pretty insulting to suggest that "what we like" is definitively THE GREATEST and THE BEST.

Talking about how they "ignored gender and genre" reminds me of the discussion around Justice Sotomayor, when she dared mention that her race and gender had an effect on her world view. What they almost certainly mean by that is that they didn't give special consideration to female authors nor did they attempt to set up a quota system for books within different genres. What they almost certainly DIDN'T do was question whether their gender or race or class played a part in what books they chose to read in the first place, whether they undervalued certain genres because of personal biases, etc. etc. "Ignoring gender and genre" and attempting to construct a fair list for both men and women? Those are not the same things. #booklists
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Taren
11/06/09

In reply to Is It Time To Stop Listing "Best" Books?
No no, there's never a bad time for lists! The great thing about a list like this (which is garbage for ignoring women) is that it can inspire discussion, just like what's going on right here. Someone says "hey, I read a great book(s) by a woman this year" and someone else says "me, too" and then we all get all sorts of book recommendations we might not necessarily have gotten before. Also, I love lists and read all that I see, even when I don't really understand what they're talking about (yeah, I'm talking to you, Lost). #booklists
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