Forgive me for dwelling once again upon a subject of heartbreak and loss, but at the moment it is these memoirs that are illustrating the tangibility of life and the importance to live each moment with true vivaciousness for me. There is something about memoirs, the relationship between author and reader, that cannot be replicated through biography or fiction. There is often a fragility and an honesty in the version of events presented and in 'The Year of Magical Thinking' these feelings permeate Didion's work. Joan Didion is often noted for her explorative literary essays predominantly based upon the premise of Americana's disintegrating morals and subsequent cultural chaos, to quote Wikipedia (I shouldn't, but this is blogger and not a University essay) there is often a "sense of anxiety or dread" that penetrates much of her work, coupled with a repeated foci on individual and social fragmentation. The anxieties and fragmentations that one may expect to find within a copy of 'Democracy' are to be found tenfold here, in this fragile memoir. 'The Year Of Magical Thinking' provided Didion with a number of accolades and glittering literary trophies, including the National Book Award in 2005, however for Didion - who spent forty years as a writer, but also as a wife, none of these praises and prizes matter quite so much from her stance of loss. For this is the topic 'The Year Of Magical Thinking' broaches; delicately, cathartically, "half memoir, half investigative journalist" Didion pieces together the death of her husband - writer John Gregory Dunne - in the only way she really knows how.
The book is beautiful. Both inside and out. The simplicity and delicacy of the memoir's aesthetics and the whimsical title are in stark contrast to the turmoil of true and often terrifying emotions that are catapulting through the book, but are often barely disclosed directly, instead these emotions for instance are disguised in bold font as a blurb, saying all that needs to be said, "You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends." This is a sentence Didion continually repeats throughout the pages, a widows mantra, it is a phrase that wholly encapsulates all her anxieties, of both the past (could I have saved him?) and the future (who would take me to the emergency room?) From her position, a harrowing year in which her husband unexpectedly dies and her daughter is hospitalised with severe medical difficulties, we could forgive Didion for wallowing in self-indulgency, for wailing and despairing. But the memoir contains little of this, instead when picking up this memoir the reader is transported to a place of poignancy, of muted understanding. Didion's notable writing style glitters with acuteness; her introspection critical, her rollercoaster of emotions - horror, grief - all spelt out, but logically, with depth and demonstration - from her own behaviour or texts when she is looking to piece together an answer.
For me, it seems as if Didion did not know how to recover other than by writing. If she had had a case of writers block she would have turned to John; in the absence of John she turned to writing. There is an overriding sense within the opening pages of the memoir that Didion is attempting to sequence the events, to piece together all that happened that fateful night, not even with an insiders eye but with a writers curiosity - this is only emphasised by her procurement of the log of visitors or the citing of case studies - Didion testifies "I needed to know how and why and when it had happened" though throughout, there is evidence that Didion knows this is ultimately unobtainable. Initially, it is a methodical, cathartic book, its creation largely emphasising the means by which Didion attempted to instil rigour and pattern into her life to normalise John's death. The most natural process Didion knew to combat and channel her emotions simultaneously was to write. But through this procurement of facts and almost disassociated stance Didion's true emotions and anxieties are revealed. Her reliance on higher knowledge - medical assessments and synonymous factual cases - is due to her inability to recall certain trivial pieces of information surrounding the night. Each medical fact Didion is told is seized upon, and ravished with a writers knowledge, it is avidly researched both within both fact and fiction (demonstrating Didion's intense literary knowledge even at her most fragile). Didion states "information is control" but in this sense it seems more apt to postulate what she really means is knowledge is security and comfort.
As the memoir continues this writer's curiosity propels to more philosophical levels, Didion creates deeply moving constructions, rhetorically questioning "When did he begin to think of himself as dead?" and repeatedly challenging the notion of fate. Didion loses herself in the consideration 'do we actually know on some otherworldly plane that we are dying?' seemingly finding security within anything that allows her to think and distract herself from reality. Some may consider this morbid curiosity, but I identify with this again as that writer's curiosity - a hunger for information, the desire to piece together each tiny detail to make it fit into a storyline. Except, what Didion finds is that in real life not everything can always piece together, sometime it is entirely random, sometimes "life changes fast. Life changes in the instant." An author may pepper fateful hints throughout their reading, alluding at what is to befall the protagonist at a cliffhanger moment, life does not do this, despite how much Didion looks for it to do so.
This book is so accessible, it's language so beautifully precise. It's sentence structure a gorgeous demonstration of the power of language and it's thin spine slipping perfectly into my Mulberry bag. However despite all this, this is not a book I could read in public. Unless I was willing to let my mascara bleed behind oversized sunglasses. On more than one occasion I completely broke down in tears, identifying with Didion's affectionate, loving accounted prized memories, the dedication moment and birthday present in particular. I won't elaborate, not to prevent spoilers but to express how if anyone but Didion shared these memories it would not be the same. 'The Year of Magical Thinking' is a book thats' beauty lies in the close connection it establishes with its reader. It is a personal experience due to the exposure and rawness of Didion's memories and the extent to which anybody who has ever loved and lost will find a source of comfort or relation within the book's pages. As any memoir is, this is wholly hers and as any memoir about loss also is, this is a little of John's too.
The strength of this memoir lies in its embracing of the emotions grief thrusts upon the one left behind. Public breakdowns, getting lost in past memories, searching for answers and hidden meanings in conversations, all demonstrate the extent to which grief truly is horrific and the levels of adjustment it requires. Upon occasion Didion worries about who will look after her or who can recount her dreams to now; these are moving genuine worries, that anybody whose ever loved and lost (even in a break-up) will recognise. "I have no way of knowing" she admits when referencing just what John could have edited in a file of random thoughts from the day of his death, in fact this is an admittance with wider applicability, Joan finally admits her lack of control, her powerlessness, how she couldn't have altered the scenario despite however much she wished the alternative was credible. In a statement, delivered with complete astuteness Didion states "grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it." The memoir serves in reminding us to treasure all that we have in its transience through Didion's emotions and thoughts now she is bereft: this is summarised for me, most clearly by Didion's admission "I could not count the times during the average day when something would come up that I needed to tell him. This impulse did not end with his death. What ended was the possibility of response."
Didion exemplifies the irrational and rational schism from normality in the state of grief, the waltzing between familiarity and unfamiliarity. It is as if the bereaved are the ones who really enter purgatory as they dance between the living and the dead. Adjusting. "I realise as I write this that I do not want to finish this account" Didion states, melting hearts. For, this is a wholly understandable admittance. Didion's whole life has been wrapped around her and John constructing their own books in tandem offices, sharing ideas and naming each others novels, now this book is about John and it is the hardest to let go. Didion calls this book her year of "magical thinking" perhaps this is because it was another year with John. His omnipresence within the pages of the book overshadows the empty reality of his absence. What we are privy to, as the reader, is Didion obtaining closure; through methodics, through fantasy, through fact and through fiction.
What is even more heartbreaking, is Quintana, her ever returning constant within this book, is the subject of her second memoir 'Blue Nights' following her tragic death. At one point within the book we learn Didion keeps both her wedding ring and Quintana's baby ring on a chain around her neck. Hanging as close to her heart as she can make them. 'The Year of Magical Thinking' is an emotionally toiling book. But also, like John and Joan were jealous of the Black family, I became jealous of the iconography of their relationship. I was jealous of their unity, moved by their separate offices under one roof. The little things such as their sharing of ideas and their meals out together. And the big things, such as their steadfastness to their marriage despite several times issuing the contrary. Their union was love. This book's subject is not death, it is love. And if this is what true love is, I would take the loss just to have it.
