TW: Death.
Joan Didion is an important figure in contemporary American literature. Recently, I read her work for the first time- a memoir titled The Year of Magical Thinking. It is a book about the year following the sudden death of her husband and her daughter’s hospitalization. While I can imagine how difficult it must’ve been, my experience of reading this book was not so simple.
Death is probably one of the only two irrefutably universal experiences (the other being birth). Yet, what we make of it and how we deal with it can be so drastically different as to make one’s experience unintelligible for another. Western and non-western cultural notions of death are deeply different. In the broadest sense, the west sees death as final in ways that non-western cultures may not. In addition, different social and religious developments in recent western history have changed the way people perceive and express grief (something the writer talks about in her book). While I have related to, felt deeply moved by, and been helped by many western stories dealing with death and grief (even when they express it in a way that is not mine), this one failed to make me feel anything.
The main reasons for this disconnect are the way the book is written and the central focus being that of self-pity while grieving. Didion writes, ‘You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. The question of self-pity. People in grief think a great deal about self-pity. We worry it, dread it, scourge our thinking for signs of it. We fear that our actions will reveal the condition tellingly described as “dwelling on it”… Visible mourning reminds us of death, which is construed as unnatural, a failure to manage the situation. “A single person is missing for you and the whole world is empty,” Philippe Ariès wrote to the point of this aversion in Western Attitudes toward Death. “But one no longer has the right to say so aloud.”
What is one to do, then? In this case, the writer turns to research, and much of the book is written in an archival manner- here’s what happened at this time. She shares the symptoms of grief as experienced by her without delving into them so that it might as well be a clinical report. Lastly, she shares sociological and psychological theories. Here, I found an idea that chilled my bones- grief is a mental illness. Though widely dismissed, a version of it remains in the form of Prolonged Grief Disorder. The writer does not dispute the idea of grief as a mental illness as she disputes other theories.
Many American critiques of the book concern the author’s name-dropping famous people and the lavish lifestyle she leads. I didn’t mind that so much- she was a rich and successful writer who did important work in important circles. If any VIP parties or five-star hotel rooms could have mitigated her pain, they would have. Quite understandably they do not- especially considering that her daughter was to pass away in the following year. I speculate, but I think that if she could have given it all up to have them back, she would. Wouldn’t most people?
The archival manner in which she captures the year, and the sense of shame around emotions do not allow me to any gateway into her experience. It’s hard to grasp any grief via the dry descriptions of things she did and places she went to. It’s also difficult to get an idea of the relationship shared between them- although that could be intentional (and understandable if so). She writes a lot about her cognitive deficits and irrational thoughts. But to me, in whatever tiny bit I have learned about grieving, not being able to think straight and having irrational thoughts are normal, natural, and common responses to death. She wants her husband to come back (this is the magical thinking) and I understand that to show pain, desire, love, or many other profound feelings- all of which are perfectly valid. If nothing else, isn’t it simply human? The author also immediately feels ashamed and apologetic at showing any emotion. It seems that the only acceptable way to be is as if nothing has changed. I don’t know if this is something society demanded from her or if it is a self-imposed condition, but in my opinion, this is irrational instead of her thoughts and feelings.
There are a few, fleetingly tender moments, especially with her daughter. And some very wise thoughts too, such as “Time is the school in which we learn.” Her writing is sparse and precise. Yet, this is a very well written book that did not make me feel anything. However, it made me think about my own experiences with grief (admittedly, I am not healthy about it) and those of different cultures.
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