Joan Didion: The Woman Who Wrote the 60's

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the "ideas" with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience."

This quote is from Joan Didion in her collection of essays entitled "The White Album." I recently read this book, and ever since, I can't seem to get these particular words out of my head.

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live." That's beautiful, isn't it? To Didion, writing this was probably just another day in the office. She constantly worked, rarely leaving her house out of laziness and pain.

Didion experienced chronic migraine, something I had never really thought about until reading her essays. She would spend countless hours lying in her bed, afraid to move or make any noise, because of sheer internal suffering. Sometimes, she would sleep all day if experiencing an especially intense migraine, disabling her from having anything close to a normal life. When she wasn't sleeping, she wrote. She wrote about the change she saw, the abnormal she found in the conventional, and the authenticity of the world around her. She's my hero.

If you aren't familiar with Didion, you might have heard of a movie called A Star Is Born, in which she wrote the screenplay. In the sha, sha, shalllllowww. Yeah, that's the one.

Back to my story now:

I've always known that I've wanted to be a writer. I've always felt this pulsing instinct to tell stories. But reading Joan Didion's essays has helped me discover the kind of writing I want to do.

Most of her publications revolve around human interest. The personal side of journalism is her forte. Notably, she focused on the vibrant times around her, when things were happening all at once: the 60s. Not only was she gifted an incredible muse, but she knew what to do with it.

Didion met with members of the Black Panther Party to discuss the Civil Rights movement. She befriended a woman belonging to the Manson Family, diving into the complexities of cult culture. She visited the Hoover Dam and talked to the engineers. She even sat in a recording studio with Jim Morrison, examining what she predicted the future of music to look like. Most writers at the time would have never put themselves in the positions Didion did, especially not as a woman. But Didion didn't care.

She occupied the space between exposition and reporting on the expected. Instead of uncovering sensationalistic lies, she focused on the personal deep cuts of being a human. Many of her essays focus on simple things she noticed while living in a crazy period. One piece is centered entirely around an argument she overheard between a couple in the airport. The following story is about a family burying their son where a volcano used to be.

If I could time travel, I'd travel to the 60s. I'd simply follow Didion around, trying to replicate her every move. I'd pretend to have migraine, too, in hopes of being just like her. I'd venture to the rallies and follow her to the prisons. I'd do it all to see her write.

Part of me wants to believe that her writing was so good simply because of the time she got to work in. The new wave of cultural change in America has got to be the major contributor to her legacy, right?

This just wasn't the case. Joan Didion knew how to sculpt words into a love language for the hippies. She took the hand she was dealt and then laid down her own cards, showing her raw emotion and personal struggles. She connected with people on a level that reaches far beyond anything I've read in a while. And she did this all while talking about the most mundane things; her daughter reading Judy Bloom, her conversations with her husband, or simply the wonders of California's water supply.

Last year, Didion died.

Celebrities everywhere took to social media to honor her for her significant contribution to society. Media outlets thanked her for paving the way for so many young female writers. Although touching to see, you can't help but feel like she still didn't get enough credit.

I strive to be like her one day. Touching even the edges of her bounded pages seems to me a great success. I hope she knows that poetic journalism isn't dying. At least not on my watch.

This blog post may seem very dull to someone who hasn't heard of Joan Didion. But I hope, more than anything, this has inspired some of you to search out her work. Read just one of her essays and tell me she's not incredible.

I sincerely hoped you enjoyed this post or at least stuck around to see if it got any better. I don't think it did. I tried to make this one short and sweet for all of you, racing through life like the 60s might end at any moment. At least, that's how Didion felt when writing most of her work.