#didion — Public Fediverse posts

#3goodthings (#Walking in #San Francisco)

1. Walked to City Lights and bought #Didion's, Play it as it Lays.

2. Walked around and heard a Scottish fiddler group playing and lots of people dancing together -- young and old and in-between.

3. Walked through Chinatown where there was a festival happening and a lot of people out enjoying the city.

#3GoodThings (1st class on #Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking)

1. The students were blown away; gutted was the word used.

2. We talked about how the narrative weaves together stream of consciousness (non-linear) with an extreme discipline (linearity).

3. One student remarked on the effect of Didion saying she picked out her wedding dress on the day JFK was murdered. A juxtaposition that packed a wallop.

#Books
#Humanities
#LovingTeaching

Slouching Towards Bethlehem – Joan Didion (1967)

https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/06/didion/

#HackerNews #Slouching #Towards #Bethlehem #Joan #Didion #1967 #Literature #Classic #Essay

Lesetagebuch „Notizen für John“ (5)

Relativ zu Anfang des Buches sagt der Therapeut etwas über Kinder in emotionalen Schwierigkeiten. „Die Eltern von Kindern in emotionalen Schwierigkeiten“, sagt er, „neigen dazu, sich schuldig zu fühlen, hoffnungslos – was haben sie falsch gemacht, was hätten sie anders machen können, wo ist alles auseinandergebrochen – und manchmal zeigen sie es, indem sie wütend werden.“

Es sind unterschiedliche Gedanken, die durch diesen Satz in Fluss kommen. Ich denke an ein Gespräch, das ich gestern geführt habe, in dem mir eine 42jährige Frau erzählte, dass ihr Leben vorbei sei, dass sie, so sehr sie sich auch bemühte, immer wieder scheiterte. U.a. haben wir über ihre Kinder geredet, die nach der Scheidung getrennt wurden, ein Sohn lebt bei ihrem Mann, der andere bei ihr. Ich hatte das Gefühl, sie würde sich vielleicht schuldig fühlen, weil ich mich gegenüber meinen Kindern ständig schuldig fühle. Und dann sagte sie: „Meine Mutter hat sich niemals schuldig, nicht einmal verantwortlich gefühlt. Schon als ich erst 2 Jahre alt war, bin ich es gewesen die an allem die Schuld trug“. Ich gebe zu, dass ich ganz kurz den ketzerischen Gedanken hatte, wie erleichternd es sein muss, selbst keine Verantwortung anzunehmen wie diese Mutter, die ihre Tochter offensichtlich schwer beschädigt hat, alles zu delegieren und wider besseres Wissen andere verantwortlich zu machen. Solche Dinge, die ja bereits während des Denkens als haltlos entlarvt werden, hat man wohl, wenn man hoffnungslos ist, wenn man zwar nicht wirklich wütend werden kann, dafür aber momentweise bösartig im Denken.

Ein anderer Gedanke beleuchtet das Dilemma, das schon lange meine Überlegungen bestimmt. Auf der einen Seite ist mir durchaus bewusst, wie wenig handlungsfähig ich bin, wie die Möglichkeit etwas zu ändern abnimmt, je weiter ich mich in der Suche nach falschen Entscheidungen, falschen Worten oder dem, was ich übersehen habe, verstricke, mich wieder und wieder frage, wo ich hätte handeln müssen es aber nicht getan habe, wo ich Dinge falsch verstanden und dementsprechend verkehrt reagiert habe. Also dieser Einsicht, dass derlei Fragen und Gewissensforschungen nur in Grenzen sinnvoll sind, nämlich um die Verantwortung für das tatsächliche Versagen zu übernehmen und sich bei den Beteiligten dafür zu entschuldigen und bestenfalls auch sich selbst zu verzeihen, weil man versteht, dass man sein Bestes zu geben versucht hat, auch wenn das Beste eben nicht gut genug gewesen ist. Auf der anderen Skala dieses Gedankens herrscht der Zwang, diese Gedanken immer wieder zu denken, immer neue Fehler aufzuspüren, so lange bis endlich alles wieder gut ist, bis es endlich allen gut geht. Erst dann, denke ich, könnte ich all das loslassen, dann endlich würde ich den Ausgang des Labyrinths entdecken. Dabei weiß ich, dass ich mir nicht erlaube den Ausgang zu sehen, der natürlich längst existiert.

#didion #lesetagebuch #notizenFuerJohn #verantwortung

#3GoodThings

1. Had a visit w/dearest friend from Bay Area.

2. The #dentist! He overheard the technician asking about my work. I mentioned writing #books. Enter the dentist who was listening @the threshold. He asked what my most recent book was. I said #memoir & he asked about it. We then had an amazing talk re: reading, #grief, death. I told him about #Didion's Year of Magical Thinking. He put it on hold @ the #library. The technician told me about her father & his ashes.

3. No cavities.

Ik lees nu een boek van Joan Didion — haar laatste boek, althans, dat dacht ik. Ze overleed in 2021. En juist daarin zit iets vreemds: dit boek is helemaal niet haar laatste geweest.

Translation button down below site 👇

https://www.met-k.com/2025/07/13/tussen-therapie-en-literatuur-didion-in-notes-to-john/

#review #didion #books #book #boek #blog #blogpost #blogging

Aujourd’hui, il y a du Joan Didion dans le New Yorker (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/07/what-we-knew-without-knowing) et dans l’Oreille tendue (https://oreilletendue.com/2025/03/31/accouplements-258/). • #didion #oreilletendue

LitHub published a piece today on #memoir and discussed how so few were listed in the top 100 best books of the past 25 years. #Didion's Year of Magical Thinking was on it, which is one of the greatest memoirs/books I've read. Here are three of my other favorites (there are more!). How about you?

#PattiSmith, Just Kids
#HuaHsu, Stay True
#MichelleZauner, Crying in H Mart

#litstudies
#bookstodon

LitHub published a piece today on #memoir and discussed how so few were listed in the top 100 best books of the past 25 years. #Didion's Year of Magical Thinking was on it, which is one of the greatest memoirs/books I've read. Here are three of my other favorites (there are more!). How about you?

#PattiSmith, Just Kids
#HuaHsu, Stay True
#MichelleZauner, Crying in H Mart

#litstudies
#bookstodon

June is #Alzheimer's and #Brain Health Awareness Month. After I wrote my #memoir with #neurologist Dr. Bruce Miller, I was invited to write a column for the #WSJ -- Five Best Books on Grief. I chose #Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, #Morrison's Beloved, #Zauner's Crying in H Mart, Macdonald's H is for Hawk, and for good measure a poem, #Ginsberg's Kaddish. Here is my brief reflection on #Zauner. You are not alone in/with your #grief. #EndAlz

June is #Alzheimer's and #Brain Health Awareness Month. After I wrote my #memoir with #neurologist Dr. Bruce Miller, I was invited to write a column for the #WSJ -- Five Best Books on Grief. I chose #Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, #Morrison's Beloved, #Zauner's Crying in H Mart, Macdonald's H is for Hawk, and for good measure a poem, #Ginsberg's Kaddish. Here is my brief reflection on #Didion. You are not alone in/with your #grief. #EndAlz

"(Was there time to go back? Could we have a different ending on Pacific time?)"

Reread what I think is one of, if not the, most powerful #memoirs about #grief. Here #Didion imagines the three hour time difference between #NYC and #LA as an opportunity to create a different story, an interval in which to intervene and deny the death that had happened.

#JoanDidion, #TheYearOfMagicalThinking

Finally read #TejuCole's Open City (2011) & this passage, along with others referencing #Said, #Benjamin, #Didion, #Melville, #Coetzee, about plagues really stood out : "I read somewhere recently that the city of Leiden lost thirty-five percent of its population in a five-year period in the 1630s. What could it mean to live with such a possibility, with people of all ages dropping dead around you all the time? The thing is we have no idea" (200-201).

#bookstodon
#litstudies

@w7voa

"sentenced #Didion Milling Inc. officials – including a #corporate vice president...

“These defendants put Didion workers in grave danger and five people tragically lost their lives...” said Attorney General Merrick B. #Garland. “Companies of all sizes should take note: failure to comply with our country’s #workplace safety and #environmental laws can cost workers their lives and put individual corporate managers in federal prison.”
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/corn-milling-company-officials-sentenced-federal-prison-their-role-deadly-explosion-killed

#Crime #Prison #DOJ #Press

@doctormfo @appassionato @fladdle @bookstodon.

Here are a few that helped me: #Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking; #Ginsberg's #Kaddish; #Gabbard's A Life Beyond Reason.

@realTuckFrumper. Important article on "grief," which includes this sentence, "Grief is not one thing, and it is not linear." There are many powerful books about grief, none more so that #Didion's #YearOfMagicalThinking.

I think we're reaching Peak Second Coming. Ever since Joan #Didion quoted #Yeats's 1919 poem in 1968, the self-styled US "center" — people who believe only in moderation, including moderate fascism it seems — have been obsessed with its imaginary political geometry. You know the one: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold [...] The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity." A third of this #NYT opinion piece is occupied with the explaining how to apply this tiresome trope, including this gem of #pomo disorientation: "I've never interpreted the center in Yeats's poem to mean something like a politically moderate middle but rather a moral foundation, the ideological core of a nation and its people."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/16/opinion/free-speech-campus-universities-promising-news.html

INT. WINTER HIDEOUT - AM
Fresh, clean, cold...and 15 min with #Didion on #hemingway
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001hx6c :blobnom:

#literature #amwriting

@aristofontes Yes. In National Review's 10 Anniversary Issue.

That same year Didion hosanna'd Norman Mailer's An American Dream, further solidifying her cred as one tough cookie.

#Didion #Mailer

@Jen @bookstodon. Oh, since you referenced The Year of Magical Thinking, I also meant to mention the powerful #netflix documentary about #Didion. The Center Will Not Hold.

https://www.netflix.com/title/80117454
Moving documentary, #Didion.

I've been reading Joan #Didion's first book, the novel Run River. It reminded me how much I enjoyed this #essay by Michelle Chihara in #Lithub. Good on #myth, #California, and #writing.

https://lithub.com/in-renouncing-the-myths-of-old-california-did-joan-didion-deflect-responsibility/