What would Joan think?
Reading the newly released 鈥淣otes to John,鈥� it鈥檚 hard not to wonder how the late author would feel about having her personal notes from a series of painful therapy sessions converted into a book after her death.
Discovered in a small filing cabinet in Didion鈥檚 office after in 2021 at age 87, the 150 loose pages formed a kind of journal she kept for her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, about her meetings starting in late 1999 with psychiatrist Roger MacKinnon. The writer of such cult favorites as 鈥淭he Book of Common Prayer鈥� (1977) and 鈥淭he White Album鈥� (1979) was an assiduous notetaker and recordkeeper who explained her lifelong compulsion to write things down in her well-known essay, 鈥淥n Keeping a Notebook,鈥� to remember what certain moments had meant to her.
Still, the pages weren鈥檛 exactly a secret. They were included in papers that were placed by Didion鈥檚 heirs, her late brother鈥檚 children, without restrictions on access in the Didion/Dunne archive at the New York Public Library.
Much of the writings in the book released by Knopf center on the couple鈥檚 adult daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, who was adopted as a baby and named after a Mexican territory that later became a state.
In the notes to Dunne, the famously guarded Didion details her worries and guilt about Quintana鈥檚 chronic alcoholism more openly than she did in the books she later wrote on that painful period.
鈥淭he Year of Magical Thinking鈥� (2005) focused on Dunne鈥檚 fatal heart attack in 2003, and 鈥淏lue Nights鈥� (2011) mourned her death just two years later at age 39 from acute pancreatitis.
鈥淗e wanted to know how old Quintana was when we got her, the details of the adoption,鈥� Didion writes to Dunne about one session with MacKinnon. 鈥淲e talked at some length about that, and I said I had always been afraid we would lose her. Whale watching. The hypothetical rattlesnake in the ivy on Franklin Avenue.鈥�
Some of the most poignant passages are about the numerous dreams she described to the psychiatrist about her daughter鈥檚 addiction.
The hopelessness and vulnerability she acknowledges belie Didion鈥檚 cool and controlled public image.
鈥淚 told him about the dream I had this week in which Quintana and I were sharing a room and every time I woke during the night she wasn鈥檛 in her bed, she was sitting by the window and she was getting drunker and drunker,鈥� Didion writes. 鈥淎nd there was nothing I could do about it. She couldn鈥檛 see me watching her.鈥�
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AP book reviews:
Anita Snow, The Associated Press
