I can tell you right now--emotionally disturbed, masochistic types who wallow in the kind of misery Joan churned out for decades. And no one churned it out better than she. Darlings, the woman may not have been the most upbeat of reads, but she knew how to write a sentence.
Along with Sylvia Plath, Joan is the Depressive Queen Of Literature. Reading either is sure to induce depression if one is not there already.
When I think about the spinster Charlotte Vale, played by Bette Davis in 1942's "Now, Voyager," I thank God she wasn't alive to hide Joan Didion books from her mother, because I know she would have read them. Had she done so, Dr. Jaquith would not have been able to help her.
Congrats to NYPL for getting Joan's archives. But have a security guard on hand when a patron accesses them.
One never knows what kind of emotional wreckage may be triggered!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Queen of depressive literature indeed!!
ReplyDeleteI can think of a few others, but she reigns supreme!!!
Victoria,
ReplyDeleteAgreed, but I'd like to know who are
your others. Maybe I haven't read them.
In which cased, I might avoid them.
David Foster Wallace, James Baldwin, Tennessee Williams, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Orwell, Heller, Kafka, Virginia Woolf,
ReplyDeleteVictoria,
ReplyDeleteGreat choices. But there was something about
the poetry of Williams' writing that made the material
bearable. Yes, Blanche is carted away to a loony
bin, and the Kowalskis' marriage will never be the same,
but there is something postive or hopeful to the way
Blanche, or at least Vivien Leigh, delivers her final line,
"I have always depended upon the kindness of strangers."