Through recent engaging conversation with Andrew Ivers at the Courtesy Diner, I became re-interested in Joan Didion, whose book The Year of Magical Thinking I read when it came out. Andrew has agreed to share reflections on Didion’s work, particularly her journalism, which vocation has been his own passion since I met him at SLU in 2005.
Join us
Sunday 6 October 2024
Potluck dinner begins at 6, and Andrew will share at 6:45
At the home of Chris Wallach
5 East Lake Road, Fenton MO 63026
Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Did any of it? Why do I keep a notebook at all? It is easy to deceive oneself on all those scores. The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.
Joan Didion, “On Keeping a Notebook,” in Slouching towards Bethlehem
