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| Joan Didion, author, and Margaret Talcott, associate producer of Writers on a New England Stage, at the Music Hall Tuesday night. (Photo by Tim Gillis) |
Staff Columnist
PORTSMOUTH -
Renowned writer Joan Didion read from her latest work at the Music Hall Tuesday night. “Blue Nights” recounts the death of her daughter, Quintana Roo, from acute pancreatitis on August 26, 2005. That death came during Didion’s book tour for “The Year of Magical Thinking,” about the death of her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, and her daughter’s prolonged illness. The latter work won the National Book Award for Non-Fiction and catapulted Didion from accomplished author to celebrity status.
Renowned writer Joan Didion read from her latest work at the Music Hall Tuesday night. “Blue Nights” recounts the death of her daughter, Quintana Roo, from acute pancreatitis on August 26, 2005. That death came during Didion’s book tour for “The Year of Magical Thinking,” about the death of her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, and her daughter’s prolonged illness. The latter work won the National Book Award for Non-Fiction and catapulted Didion from accomplished author to celebrity status.
She was interviewed onstage after her reading by Virginia
Prescott, host of New Hampshire Public Radio’s “Word of Mouth.”
“People came to know you through "The Year of Magical
Thinking," Prescott said.
“And I got to know them,” Didion replied promptly. “A woman
stopped me in the airport. She was with her two kids, and they were trying to
twist away from her, you know - as kids do, and she told me how the book
changed her.”
Didion’s “Blue Nights” started out as a book about her
daughter’s death, but in many ways, became a book about her own aging and ill
health. Always a petite woman with a powerful voice, Didion was escorted onto
the stage and sat to read from her memoir. Her wit was as sharp as ever,
however, especially as evinced in the interview.
Blue Nights is a myriad of styles - part F. Scott
Fitzgerald, with glittery summer nights recounting the high-profile life the
family led as Hollywood screenwriters, and part Allen Ginsberg, with repetitive
lists of punctuated pain. Didion was asked if this style was intentional.
“It’s always intentional,” she said.
Didion admits that, despite her world travels and
intelligent writing on topics as diverse as Miami’s Cuban expatriate community
to fictional romantic thrillers, she didn’t know anything about raising a
child.
Her mother tried to help her, she said, but “she didn’t know
much of anything besides washing bottles.” When they adopted Quintana Roo, in
1968, they were planning to just go ahead with plans to travel to Saigon,
despite the violent political climate.
“If you knew me, you’d know how clueless I was about being a mother,” she said.
The narrative of her child's adoption, as a chosen child, was often a difficult one to tell.
“If you knew me, you’d know how clueless I was about being a mother,” she said.
The narrative of her child's adoption, as a chosen child, was often a difficult one to tell.
“There is a dark side with adoption: if somebody chooses
you, there's somebody else who didn't choose you,” Didion said. She was aware
of how vulnerable her daughter was, but she is still critical of her own manner
of motherhood. “I tried to protect her by ignoring it,” she said.
“For a writer who tours through disaster zones, and stood in for us all, it's hard to imagine that,” Prescott replied.
A recurring image through the memoir, and in Quintana Roo’s childhood, is of the “Broken Man,” this haunting specter of a man who wears a gas station shirt with his ordinary name on it, leering at her in the bedroom.
“For a writer who tours through disaster zones, and stood in for us all, it's hard to imagine that,” Prescott replied.
A recurring image through the memoir, and in Quintana Roo’s childhood, is of the “Broken Man,” this haunting specter of a man who wears a gas station shirt with his ordinary name on it, leering at her in the bedroom.
“Was it a symbol?” Prescott asked.
“I didn't think it was a symbol. I thought it was a real
man, trying to harm my daughter,” Didion said. “But we outgrew him.”
The author is famous for having said she didn’t know what she thought about something until she wrote it down. What does she know now, about the deaths of the husband and daughter, and her own declining health?
“The Year of Magical Thinking was about coming through, about surviving," Didion said. "Blue Nights was about not surviving, about aging. That's the experience. I may not survive."
The author is famous for having said she didn’t know what she thought about something until she wrote it down. What does she know now, about the deaths of the husband and daughter, and her own declining health?
“The Year of Magical Thinking was about coming through, about surviving," Didion said. "Blue Nights was about not surviving, about aging. That's the experience. I may not survive."
