What are your thoughts on Jaune?
It’s quite revealing to read the newly released Notes to John, where the late author reflects on Joan Didion. You might feel as if you have her personal notes from a series of challenging therapy sessions.
Discovered in a small filing cabinet in Didion’s office She passed away in 2021 at the age of 87, the Loose Page of 150 formed a journal she maintained for her husband, John Gregory Dunne, detailing a session with psychiatrist Roger McKinnon in late 1999. Acclaimed writers, such as those behind The Book of Common Prayer (1977) and The White Album (1979), were meticulous note-takers, chronicling their lifelong motivations to articulate how certain moments resonated with them, as Didion expressed in her noted essay “Notes.”
However, the pages were not exactly a secret. They were included in a paper filed by the children of Didion/Dunne’s deceased siblings, who were heirs of the Didion/Dunne Archives at the New York Public Library, and access to these archives was unrestricted.
Many works published by Knopf Center feature Quintana Roo Dunne, the couple’s adult daughter, named after the region in Mexico from which she was adopted as a baby and later became a citizen.
In a note to Dunne, the guarded Didion expresses her concerns and guilt regarding Quintana’s struggle with chronic alcoholism, contrasting it with the book she later wrote during that turbulent time.
“The Year of Magical Thinking” (2005) centered on Dunne’s sudden heart attack in 2003, while “Blue Nights” (2011) mourned his death from acute pancreatitis just two years later, at the age of 39.
“He wanted to know how old Quintana was when we brought her home and the details of her adoption,” Didion recounted about one session with McKinnon. “We discussed it for a while, and I admitted I always feared losing her, watching the whale.”
Some of the most poignant sentences revolve around the many dreams she shared with her daughter regarding her addiction, which she recounted to the psychiatrist.
The sorrow and vulnerability she conveys challenge the cool, controlled public persona of Didion, revealing her inner beliefs.
“I told him this week about a dream in which Quintana and I shared a room. She wasn’t in bed every time she woke up in the night; she was sitting by the window, intoxicated,” Didion wrote. “And there was nothing I could do about it. She couldn’t see me watching her.”
___
AP Book Review: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews
Source: apnews.com