A lifetime of magical reading

Ms. Didion in her younger days

 It's not often that I note the passing of anyone not associated with the music industry, but Joan Didion, one of the great American writers of my lifetime, passed away in New York City today at the age of 87 and her passing left me with not only the sadness of her death but reminded me of the joy of having had the pleasure of reading her books through the now many years of my life.

I discovered Didion's work when I was in college, though for the life of me I can't remember where I first heard of her or why I searched for her writing (Village Voice? Rolling Stone? Newsweek?).  I'm certain that her love of California (though always viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism), her birth state as well as mine, helped attract me to her writing, but in the end it was more her humanity than anything else.  Though Didion lived among celebrities and traversed in literary circles that aspiring writers can only dream of, it never showed in her writing--she's one of the few serious writers I've ever read whose day to day concerns didn't seem all that different from mine (not counting the whole money thing, which she obviously enjoyed a lot more of than I ever did).  Not to mention that I read her collection of essays contained in The White Album more than forty years ago and I still think about them from time to time to this day.

Her nephew, actor/director Griffin Dunne, directed a wonderful documentary about her life for Netflix called The Center Will Not Hold that I would highly recommend--it's a fine retrospective of her life and her career.

While there are many who are not only more familiar with her work than I but also more qualified to write about it, I just wanted to acknowledge how much I appreciated her contributions to the written word and all of the enjoyment her talent gave to me.  We have lost a literary giant.

Peace,

emaycee