Hmm, I'm slightly torn over this! On the one hand, Joan Didion is a giant in literary world and her personal papers will surely offer new insights into what made her tick and who the woman behind the typewriter really was. They're also, perhaps, just as important to literary history as Sylvia Plath's journals and letters were (I'm still glad those were published, especially the unabridged ones). But on the other hand, I also agree with the sentiment that her personal papers maybe should have been kept private, especially relating to therapy.
However, part of me suspects that Didion's personal attitude toward writing -- the coolness and "anything-goes" attitude with which she typically approached the subject, probably learned from her father -- may have lent itself to the sale of the papers to the N.Y. Library archives in the first place. I also can't help but wonder if, when she wrote about the posthumous publication of Hemingway's unfinished novel, she perhaps wasn't referring to the publication of an author's collected letters, but instead to a writer's right to determine whether or not their novel (in her mind, a work of art) was finished or not before it was published.
There's also a nagging part of me that can't help but wonder if Didion might not have minded that her trust donated her personal letters to a public archive, or that these letters in particular were collected and published -- after all, this is the writer who once described the experience of observing a child tripping on LSD given to it by its parents in the Haight-Ashbury as journalistic "gold." In that interview, she told her nephew Griffin Dunne, "You live for moments like that, if you’re doing a piece. Good or bad."
Like you mentioned, Didion polished these letters up beautifully in two eternally memorable books, likely covering most of the same subjects i a more refined way. Because of that, at the end of the day, I think their publication was okay. I doubt they disclose anything new or shocking about her life or mental state that she hasn't already shared with the world, and her family and trust have treated her memory and image with great care and respect since her death. I definitely plan to read them, and just view them as one more candid snapshot of a multifaceted writer whose work I will never stop admiring.
I do tend to think the publication is ethically okay. Even if we find it distasteful, who’s really harmed? That said, I’m also torn on reading it myself.
Hi, I'm Erika Reily, I live in Corpus Christi, Texas with a lovely husband and a gaggle of wonderful children and I am an extremely amateur reader relative to most of you but yet it's my thing. My late uncle taught college writing for decades and something he said once about someone's scholastic performance always stuck with me: "She's doing fine but she doesn't think about it when she's not there." I've used that line many many times in discussing what makes people, including myself, tick, and what's between the covers of books is what I think about when I'm not there. So there is my introduction!
Regarding Joan: as for me, The Year of Magical Thinking was personal enough. The image of Dunne more or less falling over dead in their dining room when they sat down to eat on an ordinary Tuesday felt intrusive to me; of course it wasn't, as she choose to share it, but it was such a private moment. I happen to be finally reading Slouching Towards Bethlehem as this conversation unfolds. I like seeing things through her eyes; I'm not drawn to seeing herself or her marriage or her therapy experience or her mind through her eyes. Has anyone read Harp, by Dunne? It's been on my shelf since she mentioned it in Magical and I look forward to reading it. I'm not Irish but my husband is, and he's old enough to remember in his suburban New York childhood a faint sense of distaste toward Irish-Americans. I'm curious about this.
Erika! Thanks for jumping aboard. I’ve really enjoyed Didion’s essays. I also enjoyed Play It as It Lays. I’m reading Run River now. But I’ve never read Dunne’s work. You’ll have to read Harp and let us know it is!
Yes, and to what extent can our prying be justified by a desire to understand the art or to understand the life that produced the art, and at what point does it just become voyeurism?
Well, at least it may enlighten some people to the notion that what writers write is not simply the outpourings of their nature but a constructed work of art.
Hmm, I'm slightly torn over this! On the one hand, Joan Didion is a giant in literary world and her personal papers will surely offer new insights into what made her tick and who the woman behind the typewriter really was. They're also, perhaps, just as important to literary history as Sylvia Plath's journals and letters were (I'm still glad those were published, especially the unabridged ones). But on the other hand, I also agree with the sentiment that her personal papers maybe should have been kept private, especially relating to therapy.
However, part of me suspects that Didion's personal attitude toward writing -- the coolness and "anything-goes" attitude with which she typically approached the subject, probably learned from her father -- may have lent itself to the sale of the papers to the N.Y. Library archives in the first place. I also can't help but wonder if, when she wrote about the posthumous publication of Hemingway's unfinished novel, she perhaps wasn't referring to the publication of an author's collected letters, but instead to a writer's right to determine whether or not their novel (in her mind, a work of art) was finished or not before it was published.
There's also a nagging part of me that can't help but wonder if Didion might not have minded that her trust donated her personal letters to a public archive, or that these letters in particular were collected and published -- after all, this is the writer who once described the experience of observing a child tripping on LSD given to it by its parents in the Haight-Ashbury as journalistic "gold." In that interview, she told her nephew Griffin Dunne, "You live for moments like that, if you’re doing a piece. Good or bad."
Like you mentioned, Didion polished these letters up beautifully in two eternally memorable books, likely covering most of the same subjects i a more refined way. Because of that, at the end of the day, I think their publication was okay. I doubt they disclose anything new or shocking about her life or mental state that she hasn't already shared with the world, and her family and trust have treated her memory and image with great care and respect since her death. I definitely plan to read them, and just view them as one more candid snapshot of a multifaceted writer whose work I will never stop admiring.
I do tend to think the publication is ethically okay. Even if we find it distasteful, who’s really harmed? That said, I’m also torn on reading it myself.
Hi, I'm Erika Reily, I live in Corpus Christi, Texas with a lovely husband and a gaggle of wonderful children and I am an extremely amateur reader relative to most of you but yet it's my thing. My late uncle taught college writing for decades and something he said once about someone's scholastic performance always stuck with me: "She's doing fine but she doesn't think about it when she's not there." I've used that line many many times in discussing what makes people, including myself, tick, and what's between the covers of books is what I think about when I'm not there. So there is my introduction!
Regarding Joan: as for me, The Year of Magical Thinking was personal enough. The image of Dunne more or less falling over dead in their dining room when they sat down to eat on an ordinary Tuesday felt intrusive to me; of course it wasn't, as she choose to share it, but it was such a private moment. I happen to be finally reading Slouching Towards Bethlehem as this conversation unfolds. I like seeing things through her eyes; I'm not drawn to seeing herself or her marriage or her therapy experience or her mind through her eyes. Has anyone read Harp, by Dunne? It's been on my shelf since she mentioned it in Magical and I look forward to reading it. I'm not Irish but my husband is, and he's old enough to remember in his suburban New York childhood a faint sense of distaste toward Irish-Americans. I'm curious about this.
Erika! Thanks for jumping aboard. I’ve really enjoyed Didion’s essays. I also enjoyed Play It as It Lays. I’m reading Run River now. But I’ve never read Dunne’s work. You’ll have to read Harp and let us know it is!
Brings to mind all those Beatles anthologies and similar.
Thank goodness most writers are obscure. It saves us from such temptation... 😅
My friend shared this with me and it was such an immediate subscribe! So researched and cohesive, loved it!
Such a fraught topic.
So true, and you’re a biographer so you get the tension here. We want to know! But are we prying?
Yes, and to what extent can our prying be justified by a desire to understand the art or to understand the life that produced the art, and at what point does it just become voyeurism?
Well, at least it may enlighten some people to the notion that what writers write is not simply the outpourings of their nature but a constructed work of art.
Exactly! The more natural it might feel, the more constructed it likely is.
I just read Notes to John. The review is at my Substack page.
Just read that. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I can’t quite decide if I’m going to dip in it myself. We’ll see.
We are all *clears throat* such uneven creatures, aren't we?
So true!