Happy birthday, Joan Didion!
Today marks Joan Didion's 77th birthday. Maybe on some level I intuited this, as I've been doing nothing but reading her, this past funky weekend. First I reread Year of Magical Thinking , then onto her newest feature, Blue Nights. The latter is more like a sequel to the first. The backstory to Magical Thinking is that she lost her husband suddenly- her longtime husband whom she was so close to she could finish the sentences of - the equally celebrated novelist John Gregory Dunne, while their only adult child was in the hospital. The book follows her mental progress the year after her husband's unexpected death, meanwhile coping with her daughter's ever-complicated illness. The idea of magical thinking stems from her irrational belief that, through doing this or that (i.e. not donating his clothes) she could bring him back. I'm sure we all engage in some level of MAGICAL THINKING. if I do this, THIS won't happen. if I'm a decent person, maybe T...