Percolations

As a general rule, I don’t read anything that would/could open the door to the negative powers that be. I especially don’t read about grief and/or depression, no matter how well written. But…., and there’s always a 'but', the other day I happened to cross paths with *Joan Didion, novelist, essayist and screenwriter. Among other words she’s penned, I found The Year of Magical Thinking (2006), which won the National Book Award for Non-fiction.

I met her through a crack in the door, really, as I was researching autobiographical literary essays secondary to having read Mark Twain’s, and stumbled into Didion’s The White Album. A volume of essays chronicling and recapturing the pervasive sense of desperation and dreams of self-discovery whose spiritual center was California  in the 1960s.

The White Album led me to The Year of Magical Thinking. In it, Didion intellectualizes the experience of her **husband’s death by thinking magical (irrational) thoughts, and in so doing, believes she can undo his death. The book is grief stricken and the unbearable lightness of the words she uses to describe the blackness at losing someone you love, to death, sucks the reader into a vortex of a meaninglessness that defies all logic.

I’ve purchased both books (how could I not?) and will add them to my library. I look forward to going back to the 60s to revisit the prime of my youth, but whether I will actually read …magical thinking? Remains to be seen.

*Joan Didion (1934 - )

**John Dunne (1932-2003)

John wrote several notable screenplays,

 among them was True Confessions based on the Black Dahlia Murders,

and A Star is Born.
side-note:
Dominck Dunne, also an author, was John's brother.

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