Joan Didion's 'Notes to John' may be a gift. And yet, I wish her the privacy she relished

Joan Didion’s persona has loomed arsenic ample arsenic her literate canon. That photograph of her holding a cigaret conscionable so, daring the camera to uncover what she’s thinking, says it all: You volition beryllium incapable to find the cardinal to the puzzle that is me.

The memoirs Didion published aft the deaths of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, and their daughter, Quintana — “The Year of Magical Thinking” (2005) and “Blue Nights” (2011) — are her astir personal, excavating her grief to nutrient works that are by turns deadpan, wrenching, restrained, operatic. She is excruciatingly introspective but successful cleanable power of each condemnation and emotion — withholding, sparing oregon repeating words to nutrient observations that gleam with quality and penetration but support their writer shadowed.

Didion died successful 2021 astatine 87, and her literate trustees authorized the work of observations she documented during an particularly fraught idiosyncratic play erstwhile she was seeing a psychiatrist to navigate her daughter’s alcoholism and perchance suicidal tendencies. Those sessions are capsulized successful “Notes to John,” journal-like entries that were addressed to Didion’s husband, who was mostly absent from the appointments.

(Knopf)

Didion’s therapist — a strict Freudian named Roger MacKinnon — was successful regular connection with Quintana’s shrink. MacKinnon shared accusation gleaned astir Quintana with Didion, unbeknownst to Quintana. It appears arsenic though MacKinnon ne'er met Quintana, and yet helium doesn’t hesitate to qualify her codependency, oregon to construe definite behaviors arsenic manipulative, oregon to disregard Didion’s fearfulness that she mightiness instrumentality her ain life. When Didion expresses guilt that her adopted girl is successful specified a “labile” state, helium offers:

“Don’t instrumentality each the blasted connected yourself, she’s a precise hard person, a precise hard case.” “You consciousness imprisoned by work for her,” helium intones. “You’re allowing her to clasp you prisoner.” This serves to reassure Didion. Meeting aft meeting, they repetition the theme: Quintana’s problems whitethorn person been exacerbated by the impenetrability of her parents’ bond, oregon by her mother’s inclination to distance. In MacKinnon’s words to Didion: “You alternatively spectacularly deficiency the skills for dealing with different people.”

The question haunting this publication is whether an writer truthful backstage that she revealed her bosom crab diagnosis to conscionable 2 friends — Alice and Calvin Trillin — would person wanted her intimate, unedited reflections to beryllium shared with readers. Close friends and household who person survived her look divided connected this issue, with the bulk coming down connected the broadside of astir apt not. The papers would person been made nationalist successful the archive she bequeathed to the New York Public Library, but if deposited determination without the attraction a publication motorboat garners, they mightiness person been relegated to obscurity.

Fame is nary uncertainty a uncommon gift, but besides cruel, with each breadstuff crumb counting arsenic an indispensable clue. I came distant from “Notes to John” feeling discomfited and saddened — though literate scholars whitethorn work it arsenic providing discourse with which to deconstruct a large writer’s oeuvre. To Didion’s Freudian analyst, the mother-daughter dynamic was everything, and the publication suggests that the parent fell short. She professed emotion for Quintana, astir whom she obsessed. But present she is ambivalent some astir the maternal relation and even, astatine times, astir her daughter. She confesses to MacKinnon, “It had occurred to maine astatine respective points that I didn’t like her.” She says, “All my beingness I person turned distant from radical who were occupation to me. Cut them retired of my life. I can’t person that hap with Quintana.”

From the outside, Didion seemed to beryllium to beryllium inscrutable, glamorous, insanely talented and invulnerable. But Quintana, these pages reveal, saw her parent arsenic “fragile,” if intimidating. How did Didion presumption herself? “A person erstwhile remarked,” she writes, “that portion astir radical had precise strong, competent exteriors and were a vessel of jelly inside, I was conscionable the opposite.” Her ethereal look masked her interior stoniness and apt facilitated her bonzer powers of reflection and reporting. This measurement penetrates that ammunition to exposure a pistillate entering her elder years arsenic dealing with exigency rooms, hep fractures, vertigo and the necessity to shed the reddish suede high-heeled shoes and hoop earrings that distinguished her outward style. She continued to stock details of her “late beingness crisis” until 2012 with MacKinnon if nary 1 else, good aft Quintana and John were gone, and 10 years aft she stopped documenting their sessions.

Ultimately, “Notes to John” whitethorn beryllium a gift. Didion broke barriers, refusing to consciousness remorse implicit valuing her vocation supra each other and forging a connection that tin lone beryllium described arsenic Didionesque. Should her insecurities and parental doubts beryllium successful the nationalist domain? Most everything is now. She indispensable person known that, arsenic an icon, her beingness would beryllium studied from each space for decades to come. And yet, I privation her the privateness she relished. But these latest revelations lone thicken the mystery: Who was Joan Didion?

Haber is simply a writer, exertion and publishing strategist. She was manager of Oprah’s Book Club and books exertion for O, the Oprah Magazine.