Learning from Joan Didion
Joan Didion died yesterday. Like America, her fragility disguised her philosophical strength. I read “The White Album” and learned that the reporter is part of the reported, that insight comes from being personally engaged. There is a role for objectivity but it needs to be married to a diversity of perspectives, each subjective, and each adding to a the whole.
These writers do her far more justice than I:
Joan Didion’s specific vision in The New Yorker
And in her own words:
“I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it.”