South and West by Joan Didion (2017)

 This is a very short book, covering some notes Didion took towards magazine pieces that never happened, and some additional memories from much later on. It's divided into two sections, one on the South and one, much shorter, on California. She goes back to the South with her husband in 1970, for the first time since visiting her father where he was stationed in North Carolina in 1942, when she was a child. I can imagine that this part has what might be politely termed a mixed reputation in the South itself. It is not entirely, in fact quite rarely, complimentary. Some of the criticisms are associated with conservatism and prejudice and seem entirely fair, but others feel prejudiced themselves and to be narrow views of the social spread of the region. But there's no doubt that it's an evocative view, with rich colour built into its picture of those small towns and cities. The comparison it brings to my mind are those Youtube videos of almost abandoned American small towns, where most of the main street is empty and tumbledown. My thought is that Didion was seeing some of these while they were still fully functioning, in fact probably just as their death warrants were being signed by oncoming neoliberal decay. It's also good to experience her work without overshadowing melancholy - the books on the death of her husband and daughter and her own ageing had a current of tension and lowering. The part on California is tiny, only a few pages, and basically simply says "I feel comfortable here". Too little to it. I'm not sure what was happening with the publication of this book; it seems too minimal to amount to one. The part on the South could have been expanded upon, perhaps, if she'd felt travel-able at that period? A bit thin, but the main part has flavour.

Blue Nights by Joan Didion (2011)

 This is very much Part II of the story that began in her previous book The Year of Magical Thinking. It covers not only the death of her daughter Quintana, but the first inklings the author has of declining capabilities as part of her ageing. Much of the same territory is compassed in a similar way, which means we have punchiness here also, concern with family modes here also, self-criticism to a strong extent here also. I pondered after having read the previous book whether she would feel able, once the focus shifted entirely onto Quintana, to address that daughter's nature and experiences more directly, particularly the alcoholism which seems to have been key to understanding her. In a sense she does, and then again doesn't. She tiptoes carefully to her sometimes drinking too much, and explores timidly the pressures that may have brought that about, but that's as far as it goes. There are also hints online at potential sexual abuse of Quintana, which as far as I can determine are unsubstantiated - she does not address these, and perhaps didn't need to? I'm not an expert. I will say I don't feel any more enlightened about Quintana after this episode of the story; she's still an enigmatic figure whose personality is not overly clear to me. Subsequently, Didion is good at picturing the unsteadying quality of the first realisations of her own frailty. When energy starts to get compromised, and interest in/hunger for the world and its machinations (her stock in trade as a journalist) starts to flag, she feels disarranged, her anchor dragging, certainties failing. On the whole, this doesn't quite have the bright thwack of the previous volume, and its sense of structure. And I will admit to one particular writing trope starting to pall a little: she uses repetition for effect often. A phrase will be considered telling, either something somebody said which seems significant, or a summary line which 'encapsulates perfectly', which will be used again later (in a separate paragraph, or in italics, or both) to harden emphasis. This trope is great when used judiciously - I got the emerging feeling here that there were occasions which could have done without the repetition, particularly when there are a string of them, old ones compounding more recent examples; the sense of significance lessening just when it ought to intensify. 

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (2005)

 As with so many writers, I've not read Didion before. No idea whether this is a good place to start as a whole, but it's certainly a good book. It's the story of her husband's death, and her daughter's life-threatening illness, which both happened in late 2003. What marks it out is a toughly enquiring tone, coupled with an honest self-appraisal. Her daughter Quintana was going through a coma-like hospitalisation at the time of her husband John Gregory Dunne's death. They were starting on dinner in the midst of the long vigil going back and forth to her bedside in a New York hospital when Dunne collapsed and died from a massive heart attack. Didion admits that she was not in the mental space where this could happen; in other words was subject to shock, despite the fact that he had been told often enough by doctors of the occlusion he had being nicknamed "the widowmaker". She looks back afterwards and sees what may have been signs, but at the time of the death is utterly sideswiped. This, with the ongoing situation with Quintana, brings on an array of reactions and interpretations as the weeks go by, all swirled by shock, but also all marked with her distinctive "cool customer" attempts at toughness, and her honest subsequent reflections on vulnerabilities and delusive paths of thought. Her analytical mind, which seems a, if not the, prominent element of her personality, is relentless, even when it's encountering her own unwillingness or inability to reach a bulwark of understanding. She has a journalist's almost kneejerk reaction about going to the literature, and includes excerpts of things she was reading which shed sometimes temporary, sometimes profound, light on her understanding of the experience, from articles in medical journals, to what might be called superior self-help books. She also revisits their family life and social life, where particular details seem to provide explanations of the undercurrents of where she's got to now. The prose is punchy and direct, whilst retaining emotional strength, which makes it engrossing. Its honesty also tells the story she probably wasn't thinking of, where we get to see her privilege and assumptions. One thing it doesn't tell is the deeper story of Quintana: a bit of very quick internet research reveals her alcoholism, which is not mentioned here at all. The next book I have by Didion is called Blue Nights, and is about Quintana's death in 2005, so I wonder whether she will feel able to engage with that fact at that point. We'll see.