Well. Ok. Blue Nights. I don't think I have any thing to say about Blue Nights that wasn't said by Caitlin Flanagan in The Atlantic. Or any thing to say about Caitlin Flanagan said that wasn't said by Heather Havrilesky on Book Forum.
It's hard to agree with Caitlin Flanagan. But she is so on point with her comments about the Didion cliché style in this book: "her sentences and her rhythms and her tics are clichés because we know them so well" (that's me quoting Flanagan quoting Katie Roiphe.) And it is now that I come to the big reveal... I didn't know that this cliché method of writing was Joan Didion. Exactly what I was writing about with Marieke Hardy, that statacco rhythm imbuing everyday objects and actions with expansive meaning, that's Didion. She invented that. In the sixties. I can't believe I didn't recognise that before. One of her best known quotes is from The White Album, which was published in 1979 and demonstrates this perfectly "“The music was not 1968 rock but the kind of jazz people used to have on their record players when everyone who believed in the Family of Man bought Scandinavian stainless steel flatware and voted for Adlai Stevenson".
The style that was driving me crazy so much in You'll Be Sorry When I'm Dead, was driving me so crazy because it's a style that has has been repeated and weakened for 45 years now. Everyone does it. Especially women writers. And the point is to demonstrate that insight that into the everyday that makes people special. Marike Hardy is nothing but a Bi-Lo version of Joan Didion. And I'm pretty sure that when a past winner of Miss Country NSW on ABC 702 this weekend described the moment of her win by remembering the weight of the crown upon her head, it's because Joan Didion "remembered the cool of the crystals on her neck" at her eighth grade graduation.
I'm sorry, Joan Didion, that I ascribed your formidable and original style to "fashion blogs". And I'm sorry that to me it was a cliché before it was an inspiration. I do love what you do and I am going to read more Didion books this year.
Hey, guess what showed up on page 4 of The Uncoupling by Meg Wolitzer, which is next on my list? A sex scene, described as "all bone and tendon and indifference and regret". Joan, girl, you are everywhere.
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