Notes To John by Joan Didion

Look. I read a lot of posthumous texts…

I like them.

I like the idea of them, I like the reality of them, but I don’t feel the need to argue that all posthumous texts are ethically justifiable or even worthy of publication…

I’ve read the tattered notes of Fitzgerald’s abandoned final novel… I’ve read the (basically complete) books that Hemingway didn’t publish before he died… I’ve read DFW’s The Pale King and – most notably – I’ve read through basically all of the assorted notes, half novels, incorrectly formatted screenplays and other literary detritus (flecked through with gold) of Malcolm Lowry.

These are all texts that were in the process of being written for publication at the time of the author’s death, and – with the notable exception of A Moveable Feast (the most significant of Hemingway’s post-death publications and one which very much has feted controversy regarding both its content and the version of it that ended up being published) – all were presented as fiction.

Although the themes of regret and addiction and depression and money and class and travel and art and cinema recur throughout the work of many of these writers and these posthumous texts convey the concerns and the questions of their actual lives as much as their fictional output, the majority of these books are published as incomplete texts, are put to market as bonus texts for aficionados rather than further proof of genius…

Incomplete novels and stories that arrive to readers are often packaged as attempts at doing something beyond documentation… these are examples of creativity, of workshopping, of building towards a text that was never realised…

I’m not talking here about the posthumous publications of the “author x died after handing in the finished manuscript” type of posthumous publication (i.e. 2666, a lot of A la recherché du temps perdu and [other examples exist]), as these are the most justifiable, ethically… But the next step down are those texts like Hemingway’s Islands in the Stream, like most of Lowry’s books, which are fictional works prevented from reaching completion due to time or health, rather than a clear decision not to publish (e.g. Kafka, and the ethics of this are unfortunately circular – Kafka didn’t want his texts to be published, but they’re “of significant literary merit”, but that’s only known because his wishes were disavowed, so (ultimately) the decision to ignore his wishes is used as the justification for ignoring his wishes, which is an ethical paradox. Or not, maybe, in your opinion).

Then, of course, you have diaries or letters that were written with some kind of expectation of later publication baked in, and then after this you arrive at the point where things are definitively murkier, though it isn’t impossible to make a biographical and (arguably) literary justification for access to this next type of text, i.e. the publication of private writings that were, inarguably, not written to be published…

This is where James Joyce’s infamous fart-based erotica sits, and this is where the publishers of this new (and clearly final) “Joan Didion book” would have you believe this sits – that this is a piece of writing so valuable and engaging that it deserves to be published and widely read, as if “one more roll of Joan Didion’s master typewriter”.

However: as much as, yes, I read this book from cover to cover and found it profoundly moving and deeply involving… Notes to John, quite simply, is not something that should have been published in this manner, with this packaging, with this marketing, with this positioning in bookshops and – more important than all the rest – without any meaningful commentary.

If the scandal and controversy of this publication has passed you by, let me summarise:

Notes To John contains the notes Joan Didion made following about eighteen months worth of psychoanalysis sessions, making notes for herself and, presumably, for her husband, the uncle of the actor Griffin Dunne (off of I Love Dick (and someone with reaaaal “due a role in The White Lotus if he doesn’t die or retire first” energy).

Didion summarises what she spoke about in the sessions, what her therapist (Roger MacKinnon – himself a very respected and frequently published industry leader) said in response, and offers slight commentary on the conversations.

Although the psychoanalysis sessions continued for many years, these notes stop in January 2003 (and start in December 1999), and whether or not at some point in time further material in this writerly project existed that Didion deleted, nobody knows.

What people do know is that the chapters as published (bar the very last one) were found printed out¹ in her office. Though when they were printed out and what she was going to do with them, nobody knows or has bothered to consider, at least not in this volume.

Did Didion print them out so she could read through them as an ailing older person, reflecting on a dark time and then a momentary flash of hope in that interim between the events narrated here and then the period of intense double grief and intense late career massive acclaim and attention that followed that grief with the publications of the beautiful, devastating, highly significant The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights??? Although those were not the final “JOAN DIDION TRADEMARK” books published in her lifetime, they were the last to be new writing. So, alas, the precedent was set…

Now, again, I’m not arguing that the notebooks and journals and letters of a significant writer or public figure are not of interest.

By all means, publish anything.

But if you publish the internal and private therapy notes left by a person that extensively discuss their child’s severe alcoholism and general poor ability to function – as this does – there needs to be more sensitivity than the two or three paragraphs of – conspicuously unattributed – opening and closing remarks. Didion wrote several autobiographical books about her life, and this was something she did not emphasise this like in those pages. That is significant.

But there is no ethical weighting. There is no consideration.

There are just those uncredited remarks, plus a handful of (again, uncredited) editorial footnotes (or maybe they’re not, maybe they’re footnotes Didion put in – this also isn’t clarified!!) that do that supremely annoying thing which some footnotes do, whereby they almost explain only things that are either irrelevant or obvious given the context.

Didion – who, at some point, maybe had expanded these notes into the version contained here from less detailed notes – saw whatever this was as some kind of project, but she writes down the ideas that were (or seemed!) important during the psychoanalysis sessions, which means that many interesting, contextualising details aren’t included. It is far from a complete text, and it is bizarre/sinister/cut-throat/acquisitive that this has been published as if it is. As if this is a book that has as much going for it as Slouching Towards Bethlehem, or The White Album… It doesn’t. This is notes. Private, personal, sketched notes. And I’m not saying they should have been burned or locked away, but I’m saying they shouldn’t have been published like this…

Academic publications of notes, drafts, diaries, letters, etc, feature prominently on my own bookshelves²… I’m a literary voyeur, a literary rubbernecker, sure… But I know that I’m no good, y’know, whereas Notes to John is being published as if it’s something anyone can buy and enjoy reflection-free…

It is is not that it has been published that makes it unethical, but how.

I think the lack of an editor, an annotator and/or a commentator who is willing to put their name on the project is a very significant sign – this is not a book anyone involved with is proud of.

An academic publication, featuring a serious conversation about literary ethics, with contextual explanations of the ways in which Didion’s treatment differed from totally orthodox psychoanalytical treatment at that point in time, could have been a valuable and an important text…

It is, yes, raw Joan Didion.

But/And Joan Didion was not someone who presented herself raw!

She was someone who was measured and calm and deliberate and created a persona for herself, that her husband and her daughter were a key part of.

The version of Quintana who is described here is not the same as the version of Quintana found elsewhere in Didion’s work.

This is a book about the failure of parents and the failure of a child, of a non-toxic familial relationship that still causes problems.³ But I’ll hold my reflections on the content to the footnotes, because my personal/emotional connection to the content shouldn’t cloud my overall evaluation of this as a publication.

It is raw Joan Didion, yes. It is a further book by a dead doyenne of literature. It is beautifully packaged and placed prominently in bookstores. It’s about mental health and parenting and addiction and money and class.

But it’s also notes. It’s a work in progress, or maybe not even that… maybe these were just notes that a writer wrote down because writing things down was the way she processed the world…

Should you read it? Maybe!

I can’t condemn the content! I can’t pretend that more Didion isn’t a treat. But like this, it isn’t right. There should be analyses, essays, commentaries, here… This isn’t how she would have published a text that she had considered finished. This isn’t her style.

It’s biographical matter, suitable for study or illumination, but not something to arrive on a shelf near a poster with an affirmation on it, which is how it has been sold.

Joan Didion has been treated poorly here.

It’s an interesting read, yes, yes, it is. But it isn’t right to have arrived like this.

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1. Presumably onto “Letter” size paper which – if you’re a person who has lived in a metric-using country (basically everywhere) is reaaaaal uncanny valley stuff when you’re near it and dreaming about the beautiful symmetry of sweet A4. ↩︎
2. On a numbers basis, I mean, compared to other people’s bookshelves… I don’t mean I’ve done something to literally draw the eye to this style of book that I own lots of… ↩︎
3. I think many under-parented people, like old, bald, scott manley hadley, yearn for the idea of having had a family like Quintana’s, with material, intellectual, practical interventions into your life an option… A “good” family, “good” parents with an understanding of the world and people in it…
   We like to think that had we had the advantages of Quintana, everything would have been OK…
   If we’d been taught to feel valued and loved and valid, and were practically able to be all or any of those things, we wouldn’t have been so miserable, so, so, miserable…
   So, it’s both crushing and reassuring to know that even with loving, expressive, articulate, thoughtful, intelligent, open, parents, things can still get out of hand…
   I suppose it would be nice to have that sense of unjudgemental love from someone who you hoped could help you, even if they couldn’t…
   Joan Didion was trying, innit, but that didn’t mean that Quintana had it easy… ↩︎