The Legacy of Literary Icon Joan Didion
“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.”
Joan Didion
Legendary author, journalist and anthropologist Joan Didion passed away aged 87 on December 23, 2021. She will go down in literary history for her novels and literary journalism. Didion was one of the most distinctive and important contemporary writers, transforming the American essay—and the terrain of American thought—in the process. Her writings were centred around the disintegration of American ideals and cultural turmoil, with individual and social fragmentation as the overarching theme. Much of her work is infused with a sense of anxiety that manifests as a rare sort of compassion. This blog, outlining her contributions to literature, is dedicated to her memory.
Didion’s Contribution
Didion wrote a plethora of sophisticated essays, novels, screenplays, and memoirs during her lifetime. Here’s a look at some of her work-
Books
As a novelist, Didion was celebrated for her lucid prose style and incisive depictions of social unrest and psychological fragmentation. With the help of her future husband, John Gregory Dunne, who was writing for Time magazine at the time, Joan Didion penned her debut novel, Run, River in 1963. Her subsequent novels like Play It as It Lays (1970), South and West (2017) are in-depth studies of many American subcultures. She was outspoken about problems such as the breakdown of American morals and cultural disarray. The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) is a heartfelt memoir based on Didion’s journey through grief. She tells the story of her daughter’s life-threatening illness and her husband, John’s death. Her writing explores the fragile threads of mortality, the unpredictability of life, and the path to moving on.
Essays
Didion was a prominent essayist. She was recognized for her talent at a very young age. Joan began her career with Vogue after having won the “Prix de Paris” essay contest sponsored by the magazine in her senior year at college. The collection of essays titled “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” is considered by many to be her best work. Her essays have become regarded as models of the genre, meandering and poetic, punctuated by the author’s eye for telling detail and piercing self-awareness. Didion’s essays have the power to simultaneously reveal and disguise the correspondent’s inner life with great care.
Journalism
“Her talent was for writing about the mood of the culture”
– Katie Roiphe
Didion was a leading figure of the New Journalism movement in the 1960s and ’70s. She excelled in social and personal commentary. Didion rose to popularity as a result of a series of insightful, in-depth feature articles in Life magazine and The Saturday Evening Post that looked at the crumbling edges of post-war American life. In 2012 she was presented the National Humanities Medal and was praised for devoting “her life to noticing things other people strive not to see.” In her later years, Didion abandoned traditional reporting and wrote a form of cultural criticism that focused on how the press and television interpreted certain events.
Upon Joan Didion’s death, what the literary community has lost is the most rational and objective voice that shaped American literature post World War II. For writers around the world, her iconoclasm is an inspiration. Her no-nonsense approach to prose writing set her apart from many of her contemporaries and urged the nation to think off the beaten track. She was a champion of culture and will remain a role model for anyone who strives to engage incisively with the world around them.
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