Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold Page #9

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Which was...

that you don't get all gloomy-doomy.

Yes.

Yes.

This book is called Blue Nights,

at the time I began it,

I found my mind turning

increasingly to illness.

To the end of promise,

the dwindling of the days,

the inevitability of the fading,

the dying of the brightness.

Blue Nights are the opposite

of the dying of the brightness,

but they are also its warning.

Writing Blue Nights was

quite a different experience

for you, creatively.

It was hard, actually.

Um...

In the middle of it I thought,

"I don't have to finish this,"

and I almost abandoned it then.

But...

I went on.

Is that because

it was about Quintana?

Because it was about Quintana.

When she wrote Blue Nights then...

When she wrote Blue Nights then...

When I... When I read it, I...

sent her a message, you know.

And she just said,

"I only wrote it for you."

She said, "I had no reason

to write it except to write it for you."

And, uh, I was very, very upset by this.

Um, she said, "I knew you'd be the only

person who'd understand this book."

I said, "I won't be the only person.

Lots of people will understand it."

But I was incredibly moved that she...

Blue Nights was her...

way of completing the process

we had been through, you know?

I think she wanted to think about

bringing up Quintana

and what had happened and...

And, I... You know, with Joan,

I think she always writes to find out

what she thinks and what she feels,

and so I think...

that's what Blue Nights was partly about.

And...

And maybe it's kind of a release, too.

The idea that you get it down

and then...

it's... I don't think...

Not that she wants to forget it,

but it just clarifies it in some way.

I couldn't, in any way...

confront the death of my daughter

for a long time.

She was much more troubled

than I ever recognized

or admitted because she was...

At the same time that she was troubled,

she was infinitely amusing and charming.

And that's naturally

what I tended to focus on.

Most of us go through life

trying to focus on what works for us,

and her amusing side

definitely worked for me.

When I was little, the Donner party

was taught to children in California.

The interesting part

of the story is the...

failure to plan for misfortune.

To plan to protect one another,

to protect themselves.

She was adopted.

She had been given to me to take care of

and I had failed to,

so there was a huge guilt.

One of the things that worries us

about dying is we're afraid

we're leaving people behind

and they won't be able

to take care of themselves,

we have to take care of them.

But, in fact...

you see, I'm not leaving anybody behind.

I know that I can no longer reach her.

I know that should I try to reach her,

she will fade from my touch.

Vanish.

Pass into nothingness.

Fade as the blue nights fade.

Go as the brightness goes.

Go back into the blue.

I, myself, placed her ashes in the wall.

I know what it is I am now experiencing.

I know what the frailty is,

I know what the fear is.

The fear is not for what is lost.

What is lost is already in the wall.

The fear is for what is still to be lost.

You may see nothing still to be lost...

yet there is no day in her life

in which I do not see her.

Hello, everybody,

and welcome to the White House.

Thank you for joining us, uh,

to celebrate Joan Didion...

who rightly has earned distinction as...

one of the most celebrated

American writers of her generation.

I'm surprised she hadn't already

gotten this award.

For her mastery

of style in writing...

exploring the culture around us

and exposing the depths of sorrow,

Ms. Didion has produced works

of startling honesty and fierce intellect.

Rendered personal stories universal,

and illuminated

the seemingly peripheral details

that are central to our lives.

"See enough and write it down,"

I tell myself.

And then some morning,

when the world seems drained of wonder,

some day when I'm going

through the motions

of doing what I am supposed to do,

which is write...

On that bankrupt morning,

I will simply open my notebook

and there it will all be, a forgotten

account with accumulated interest.

Paid passage back to the world out there.

It all comes back.

Remember what it is to be me.

That is always the point.

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