joan didion
Joan Didion's writing is so good that it genuinely depresses me.
There's a few authors that this happens with.
I distinctly remember crying when I read the first page of Henry and June. It's a book of entries collected from Anais Nin's diary. Her diary, I remember thinking, is better than anything I will ever do.
The thing I'm almost most jealous of isn't their ability. But their voice. These writers that are always so much themselves. That are, really, only themselves and nothing else.
I had the unfortunate experience of discovering all the great heroes of literary non-fiction at once. I spent the better part of a year reading Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer and Susan Orleans and Truman Capote and Joan Didion.
And so I was traumatized by the idea that maybe pouring yourself onto the page was the most natural and easy thing that a person could do.
And that because it didn't come naturally to me, because I didn't know who I was enough to pour that person out, that I would never be any good.
I accepted long ago that nobody will ever cry reading my first page.
But that thing - that being yourself on the page - also has its opposers. Which includes the entire field of journalism. And at times, when it comes to Joan Didion, has even included me.
The first time I ever heard the word solipsism was in a review for Didion. Solipsism is "the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist." It was used as an insult (non-fiction, after all, is supposed to be some account of the truth) but it's actually the most accurate word I've ever found to describe the writers that I really love.
Objectivity is a hopeless and hopelessly boring goal to chase. Objectivity has never moved anyone. And, quite honestly, neither have facts. To write only as yourself is both the more selfish and selfless thing. Because people will hate you for it, but it'll more closely approximate the truth.
An accurate account of how somebody experiences the world is always more truthful than a collection of facts. Of things that happened, but to nobody.
And so Joan Didion writes about the world indirectly. She talks about things by talking about something else. She is the medium through which every subject travels. She is always present in her own work, reminding you what it's like to be alive.
I think the solipsism criticism, just like most criticisms, reveals more about the critic than anything else. I think there's a kind of jealousy there. That it is impossible to write like Didion or Nin or Wolfe or Mailer because it's impossible to love yourself, or think so highly of yourself, or even be as confident in your account of the world, as they are. And that's what bristles a lot of people.
To write is to make people take notice of you. It's to force them to reckon with the way that you see the world. It is, essentially, a selfish act.
And most people don't love themselves enough to force the world to listen to them. And to let people feel about that however they want.