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.
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.
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.
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.
@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.
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.
@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?"
@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.
@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.
@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.
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.
@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.
@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)
@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.
@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.
@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.
@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.
@Scout: Now I'm imagining giant shitstorm created wildfires across California accidentally started by Penny. The future does not look good. Funny though, definitely funny. #leonbing
The Haunting of Hill House was such a cool book to read when I was an adolescent. I remember the less sad/creepy parts about Eleanor were really interesting--mainly her stories about her lion bookends and the mug that has stars in the bottom. It really resonated with me, this idea that someone who has a sheltered, dreary life like Eleanor would find solace in beautiful objects in her home. I suspect some part of that is what informs my decorating whenever I move into a new place.
Also, how much did The Haunting the movie suck in comparison? I loved it because of the actors and all, but completely removing the idea that Eleanor had at least some underlying psychosis made it so namby-pamby. #shirleyjackson
@kellybones: There was a much better earlier film adaptation -- I don't know if it's out on video, though: [en.wikipedia.org] I saw it as a child, and still remember how much it affected me. #shirleyjackson
@MissNormaDesmond: Oh, it's definitely out on video and DVD. It's an extremely well-regarded classic and was directed by Robert Wise. The movie he directed right after this was The Sound of Music. That would be a great double feature, I think. #shirleyjackson
@nozer: The Haunting of Hill House with Julie Harris and Claire Bloom is one of the scariest movies I've ever seen, Julie Harris was perfect in the role of Eleanor. Horror used to be done so much better, think of the Turn of the Screw with Deborah Kerr, no blood or gore but still terrifying. #shirleyjackson
@nozer: I discovered that when I subsequently went and looked at the IMDb page, which made me feel sort of chuffed, like, "Hey, look, apparently I have good taste." In a way, though, I think it speaks even more highly of the film that someone who saw it nearly 40 years ago and was totally unaware of the critical reaction to it was so affected by it. #shirleyjackson
@MissNormaDesmond: That's awesome. It seems like it's so hard these days to go watch a movie without any sort of preconceived notions about it, but that can often make for a much better viewing experience. #shirleyjackson
I think the biography Private Demons is sloppily written and that Shirley Jackson deserves better. I have been thinking this for about five years now. I'd prefer a more credulous look at her life, including her belief in magick; I also want an in-depth literary biography, encompassing all her works, both dark and light.
One of these days I will write my epic screed about how "pretty" female authors such as Edna St. Vincent Millay and Zelda Fitzgerald get full on, in depth biographies whereas Shirley Jackson--who is called a "monster" in the biography because she's overweight--gets a biography that feels like a tabloid slapdash affair.
I am perplexed by the book cover displayed in this article. What does a "demon lover" have to do with The Lottery?
Also, I think the fact that I am filled with creeping dread by almost every one of Shirley Jackson's short story titles is a testament to her power and gift as a writer. See for yourself: [en.wikipedia.org]#shirleyjackson
@SlayBelle: Oh. I was beginning to hope there was a story about a hellish fiend who made off with his girlfiend's (that was a typo and then I decided I liked it) underthings.
I have to read more Shirley Jackson is the awesome moral of this story. #shirleyjackson
@sweet_communist: As others have pointed out, yes, there's some relevance between the subtitle and the stories. However, the choice of cover art and the highlighting of that title are also all about the pulp paperback market, which generally tended toward the salacious; books that didn't really fit that image often got a gratuitously and incongruously spicy paperback jacket. #shirleyjackson
One of my favorite authors of all time. I used to have several feet of Stephen King on my bookshelf, but The Haunting of Hill House is still the only book that has made me so afraid I cried while reading it. (It's the line where Eleanor asks Theodora, "Whose hand was I holding?" for those of you who're familiar with it. I seriously just shuddered involuntarily.)
It's unfortunate that "The Lottery" is her best-known story, for it's also one of her least nuanced pieces and isn't representative of the intricacy she was capable of. I've read Hangsaman several times and still don't feel I have a solid grasp on the ending.
I recently reread The Bird's Nest and was wondering if Jackson was plagued by mental illness herself--there are a few scenes that I can't bring myself to believe could have been compellingly written by a sane person. I'll have to read her biography now. Jackson's work is amazing but it must have been hell to live in her head. I wonder if, had she been born a half-century later, we would have been privileged to have her body of work to enjoy or if it would she would have been medicated into sanity by psychopharmacology. It feels almost selfish to take such pleasure in books that were the product of her inner torment.
(I don't really have a central point here, I just can't not comment on a Shirley Jackson post.) #shirleyjackson
@cirocco: I need to read more Shirley Jackson. I wish I hadn't read a synopsis of We Have Always Lived in the Castle last night, because I'm not sure I'll be able to enjoy it as much when aware of the twist ending.
Have you read The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman? That's another great short story written by a woman, featuring mental illness, an unreliable narrator, and abounding creepiness.
@sweet_communist: That's another good tale; I read it during my Female Mental Patient Literature stage years back (along with copious amounts of Sylvia Plath and Zelda Fitzgerald.)
I don't think good literature loses its impact when one knows the ending. I've gone into every Shakespeare play knowing its conclusion (as did his contemporary audience, since none of his stories save The Tempest was original.) They were still awesome. (I guess I don't have any way of knowing how awesome they'd be if I went in cold, though.) #shirleyjackson
@cirocco: I have a soft spot in my heart for Sylvia Plath, as she went to the same college as I. In fact, during my first year, the house where she lived hosted a haunted house and they decorated their basement as a mental asylum, and got one of the residents to play Sylvia. It was a tribute of love and admiration, I think, more than derision.
That's an excellent point! Now I'm looking forward to reading it even more. #shirleyjackson
@cirocco: did you read the Sundial? That was my favorite that no one had seemed to read. It's about a family waiting in this house for the world to end. #shirleyjackson
@tracylynn: I have, but not for years, and I've forgotten everything but the broad outline of its premise. Time to revisit it!
(I just pulled it off my shelf, and there was a slip of paper tucked inside that read "Thanks, [cirocco], Susan and Joleen." Now I'm all freaked out! What were Susan and Joleen thanking me for? Reading too much Shirley Jackson makes everything seem ominous.) #shirleyjackson
11/19/09
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.
11/18/09
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.
11/18/09
Especially since her observation about Baez would apply to Obama. That is what is interesting about her writing.
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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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eta: I do idolize her though (as much as someone my age can idolize any stranger)
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#tips
11/19/09
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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Also, how much did The Haunting the movie suck in comparison? I loved it because of the actors and all, but completely removing the idea that Eleanor had at least some underlying psychosis made it so namby-pamby. #shirleyjackson
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One of these days I will write my epic screed about how "pretty" female authors such as Edna St. Vincent Millay and Zelda Fitzgerald get full on, in depth biographies whereas Shirley Jackson--who is called a "monster" in the biography because she's overweight--gets a biography that feels like a tabloid slapdash affair.
HARRUMPH. #shirleyjackson
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10/29/09
Also, I think the fact that I am filled with creeping dread by almost every one of Shirley Jackson's short story titles is a testament to her power and gift as a writer. See for yourself: [en.wikipedia.org] #shirleyjackson
10/29/09
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I have to read more Shirley Jackson is the awesome moral of this story. #shirleyjackson
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10/29/09
It's unfortunate that "The Lottery" is her best-known story, for it's also one of her least nuanced pieces and isn't representative of the intricacy she was capable of. I've read Hangsaman several times and still don't feel I have a solid grasp on the ending.
I recently reread The Bird's Nest and was wondering if Jackson was plagued by mental illness herself--there are a few scenes that I can't bring myself to believe could have been compellingly written by a sane person. I'll have to read her biography now. Jackson's work is amazing but it must have been hell to live in her head. I wonder if, had she been born a half-century later, we would have been privileged to have her body of work to enjoy or if it would she would have been medicated into sanity by psychopharmacology. It feels almost selfish to take such pleasure in books that were the product of her inner torment.
(I don't really have a central point here, I just can't not comment on a Shirley Jackson post.) #shirleyjackson
10/29/09
Have you read The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman? That's another great short story written by a woman, featuring mental illness, an unreliable narrator, and abounding creepiness.
10/29/09
I don't think good literature loses its impact when one knows the ending. I've gone into every Shakespeare play knowing its conclusion (as did his contemporary audience, since none of his stories save The Tempest was original.) They were still awesome. (I guess I don't have any way of knowing how awesome they'd be if I went in cold, though.) #shirleyjackson
10/29/09
That's an excellent point! Now I'm looking forward to reading it even more. #shirleyjackson
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11/01/09
(I just pulled it off my shelf, and there was a slip of paper tucked inside that read "Thanks, [cirocco], Susan and Joleen." Now I'm all freaked out! What were Susan and Joleen thanking me for? Reading too much Shirley Jackson makes everything seem ominous.) #shirleyjackson
10/29/09