Joan Didion | |
Joan DidionJoan Didion, "On Keeping a Notebook" Joan Didion (1934- ) grew up in Sacramento, California, and earned a
B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1956. She's been an
editor and columnist for Vogue, The Saturday Evening Post, Life
and other national magazines. With the publication of her first novel,
Run River (1963), Didion began a prolific freelance career, evolving
a cool, dry style that provided an effective counterpoint to the turbulent
era that was to follow. A long essay on sixties counterculture and San
Francisco's Haight Ashbury district was central to Slouching Towards
Bethlehem (1968), the collection of essays that announced her as a
master of cultural reportage. Although she has written highly acclaimed
novels, such as Play It As It Lays (1971) and The Last Thing
He Wanted (1996), the essays and non-fiction collected in The White
Album (1979), Salvador (1983), and Political Fictions
(2001), have made her reputation mostly that of a prose stylist and keen-eyed
social and political observer. In the essay below, which originally appeared
in the magazine Holiday in 1966, we are taken behind the scenes
and shown some of the more subjective aspects of her work. | QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION | CONTENT - For Didion, what is the difference between a notebook and a diary?
Why does she keep one and not the other?
- Didion writes that keepers of notebooks are a "different breed altogether."
Are you a member of the notekeeping breed? Why or why not?
- What is the Syndicate? Who is John O'Hara? What does Didion want
to pass on to him and why?
- What is a mnemonic? Where in the text does Didion show her notebook
being used as a mnemonic?
- We are brought up, Didion writes, to believe that others are "by
definition" more interesting than ourselves. How do you think Didion
feels about such an upbringing? How do you think it makes her feel about
keeping a notebook?
- For Didion there seems to be a moral element in keeping a notebook.
What is this element? Is it more or less important than the mnemonic
element?
- How random are the entries in Didion's notebook? Do they have a common
thread?
STRATEGY AND STYLE - Didion writes that her first notebook was a "Big Five tablet," and
she includes several direct quotes from her notebooks. What purpose
do the quotes and this detail serve in the essay?
- "Redhead getting out of car in front of Beverly Wilshire Hotel, chinchilla
stole, Vuitton bags with tags reading: MRS. LOU FOX, HOTEL SAHARA, VEGAS."
Such detail is central to Didion's notebook entries. Make a list of
some of the details she reproduces and the specific memories each elicits
for her. Speculate as to how she chose which particular details to record.
- How did you picture Didion as you read her essay? What specific cues
from the essay helped you form the mental image you did? (By the way,
many of the links below will take you to pages with photos of this author.)
- Didion's essays are often said to flow beautifully. How does the
frequent use of parentheses help create the seamless rhythm of this
essay?
- How much do you trust the things this author tells us? What evidence
from the text can you provide to support your answer?
| ENGAGING THE TEXT | - In general, do you like to write or do you avoid writing at all costs?
What was your overall reaction to "On Keeping a Notebook"?
How can you relate your first answer above to the second?
- Describe your note-taking techniques in class. Do you listen mostly,
and just jot down a point or two? Perhaps you try to write down everything?
Have you ever tape recorded a class and tried to transcribe it later?
How can you relate these things to Didion's technique?
| SUGGESTIONS FOR SUSTAINED WRITING | - Buy a notebook that you can keep in your pocket or purse or bag.
Over the course of a week, write down things that interest you from
your daily encounters with people, books, movies, the Internet, and
so on. Write them down immediately after you encounter or think of them.
At the end of the week, write an essay about your experience of keeping
a notebook. Did it turn out more like a diary or more like one of Didion's
notebooks?
- Find a fragment of your writing by looking through a desk drawer,
your computer documents folder, or the books on your favorite shelf.
Like Didion, assemble some associations and memories elicited by the
fragment until you have enough of them to compose several paragraphs.
What's changed over the time since you wrote the fragment to your rediscovery
of it? What hasn't?
| FOR FURTHER RESEARCH | Grab your text and read (or reread) "On Dumpster Diving" by
Lars Eighner. He wrote that essay, and the book from which it is excerpted,
based upon notes, a diary, and letters he wrote while he was homeless.
Write a comparison/contrast essay using his work and Didion's as your
main subjects. | WEB CONNECTION | Here's an essay
by a writer who explains why she doesn't like Didion. Read it and take
notes until you are familiar with the author's main points. What do you
think of this author's argument? What in your reading could help you support
or refute this argument? | LINKS | Biographical This is a profile
of Didion from Barnard College for a speech she gave there. You'll also
find a photo there. What is the focus of the information on this page? Here's Didion's entry
at Infoplease.com. How does the information presented here differ from
that in the link above? Do you consider the information here trustworthy?
How can you tell such things about internet resources? Here's a Didion bibliography
and links to an excerpt from Slouching Towards Bethlehem and
to an external page. What kinds of things can you learn from just studying
a bibliography? What are the limitations of bibliographies?
Bibliographical Here is an interview
with Didion from Salon about her novel The Last Thing He Wanted.
She also talks about the impact of technology on her writing. Check
it out! Didion replies here
to a letter regarding an essay of hers about public prayer that appeared
in the New York Review of Books. On which side of this issue
do you find yourself? Which writer makes a better case on this page?
Does one answer affect the other? This page has a link to
Didion reading from her essay "In El Salvador: Soluciones."
What do you make of her reading? Is it as easy to absorb her ideas in
this format as it is to read them?
Cultural This is a review
of Didion's novel The Last Thing He Wanted. Based on the review,
do you want to read this book? Can you make any connections to other
works that you've read by this author? Did you know that this author has been a fairly frequent contributor
to film? Here is a Didion
filmography. Have you seen any of these pictures? This is a photo
of Didion at a women writers photo gallery. Do you know any of the other
writers featured there? How would you go about gathering information
on them?
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