At a glance, Joan Didion's latest book, "Blue Nights," looks much like her last, the National Book Award-winning "The Year of Magical Thinking." Once again, the front cover bears amply spaced blue letters with thick trunks and delicate serifs spelling out her name and the book's title. And once again a black-and-white photograph--this time of her daughter Quintana Roo--dominates the back cover. What lies within is also, at least superficially, similar. Magical Thinking was written in the wake of the sudden death of her husband, while Blue Nights comes after her daughter--who in the previous book had rallied from pneumonia-induced septic shock to full recovery--has ended another long hospital stay, this time in death.
No two losses are equivalent, of course, and therefore neither could--nor should--two books be. Didion previously comforted herself with precision--quoting the time, "May 20, 2004, 11:11 p.m.," that she wrote her first words after her husband's death; the size, "three-by-six-inch," of the index cards in his pocket; and the chance medical facts that littered her life, "Tissue anoxia for > 4 to 6 min. can result in irreversible brain damage or death." She quoted widely, borrowing from the 9/11 Commission Report and The Merck Manual, 16th edition. She pile on the certainties and firm facts, as if research alone could overcome her disbelief, could convince her that her husband was really, truly gone.
Uncertainty has given way to a blameful regret in Blue Nights. Didion crafts her memories -- each heavily freighted with portent -- into mantras that echo through the book. She guiltily repeats the list of "Mom's saying" posted in the garage by a young Quintana: "Brush your teeth, brush your hair, shush I'm working." She finds answers in the quartet of questions that the adopted Quintana asked as a child, apparently often:
No two losses are equivalent, of course, and therefore neither could--nor should--two books be. Didion previously comforted herself with precision--quoting the time, "May 20, 2004, 11:11 p.m.," that she wrote her first words after her husband's death; the size, "three-by-six-inch," of the index cards in his pocket; and the chance medical facts that littered her life, "Tissue anoxia for > 4 to 6 min. can result in irreversible brain damage or death." She quoted widely, borrowing from the 9/11 Commission Report and The Merck Manual, 16th edition. She pile on the certainties and firm facts, as if research alone could overcome her disbelief, could convince her that her husband was really, truly gone.
Uncertainty has given way to a blameful regret in Blue Nights. Didion crafts her memories -- each heavily freighted with portent -- into mantras that echo through the book. She guiltily repeats the list of "Mom's saying" posted in the garage by a young Quintana: "Brush your teeth, brush your hair, shush I'm working." She finds answers in the quartet of questions that the adopted Quintana asked as a child, apparently often:
What if you hadn't been home when Dr. Watson called--
What if you couldn't meet him at the hospital--
What if there'd been an accident on the freeway--
What would happen to me then?
She recalls her daughter's calls to a mental hospital ("to find out what she needed to do if she was going crazy," she explained) and Twentieth Century Fox ("to find out what she needed to do to be a star"). She remembers how, like her parents, who financed their life with Hollywood scriptwriting, Quintana reacted to movies not with pleasure, but evaluations of commercial potential. She sees in these memories all the signs of a childhood stifled, of a child forced into adulthood, of, inevitably, a mother who did not quite measure up. "How could I have missed what was so clearly there to be seen?" she asks again and again, in one form or another.
Magical Thinking draws to a close with Didion still listing, still drifting, still unwilling to let go of her memories. Yet she acknowledges that they too grasp her. She sees that they are a fiction borne of an impossible hope--for return her life past--and with that realization we glimpse her journey onward. In Blue Nights, she wants none of that fiction. She rejects memento but clings to memory. She quite literally collapses on the floor of her apartment -- she watches, still in shock, as her own blood pools on the floor -- and yet she clings to life. She doesn't seem quite sure what to make of it, but still she clings.
"The fear is not for what is lost… 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 on which I do not see her."
Magical Thinking draws to a close with Didion still listing, still drifting, still unwilling to let go of her memories. Yet she acknowledges that they too grasp her. She sees that they are a fiction borne of an impossible hope--for return her life past--and with that realization we glimpse her journey onward. In Blue Nights, she wants none of that fiction. She rejects memento but clings to memory. She quite literally collapses on the floor of her apartment -- she watches, still in shock, as her own blood pools on the floor -- and yet she clings to life. She doesn't seem quite sure what to make of it, but still she clings.
"The fear is not for what is lost… 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 on which I do not see her."
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