#201 | What Can a ‘Year of Magical Thinking’ Do for You?—Joan Didion on Overcoming Adversity, Grief, and Loss

episode SUMMARY:

Douglas Vigliotti discusses the National Book Award-winning memoir “The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion. Drawing on Didion’s heartfelt story of losing her husband and daughter in the same year and her subtle yet piercing writing style, Vigliotti delves into themes of grief, loss, and the idea that stories we tell ourselves shape our perceptions, emotions, and lives, raising the importance of crafting positive narratives and embracing the complex nature of hope in the face of adversity.

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Welcome back to Books for Men, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do. So this week I am building off of last week's episode, and I think you'll see the correlation as I dive deeper into the book that I'm sharing with you today, which is a memoir called “The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion. It was published in 2005. It's about two hundred and twenty, two hundred thirty pages. In this episode, I will share some of my biggest takeaways along with some quotes that I think illuminate the ideas. And of course, I will share a little more on the author and the book. But before I do that, I just want to remind you that if you are a regular listener of this show, I'd love for you to consider supporting it. The two primary ways that you could do that is by subscribing on whatever podcast platform you're listening to this on and sharing it with someone who you think might enjoy it.

(01:10)

So whether it's this episode, a past episode, a podcast in general, either one of those two things, subscribing and sharing goes a long way in helping more people find the show and inspiring more men to read. The second thing that I wanted to remind you about is every month I write a newsletter that rounds up all of the episodes complete with summaries of each episode, all the best quotes, full book information, and newsletter-only book recommendations. And that's just one email every month and it goes out at the end of the month. So if you're short on time or you're not a listener of every episode, but you still want to support the show and you like the show, then this is a great way for you to pick and choose what books or what episodes you want to listen to because it consolidates the entire month in one brief email.

(02:08)

So if you're interested in that, you could sign up at BooksforMen.org. With that being said, let's get on with the reason why you're here, which is the book “The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion. So it's quite likely that you've heard the author's name before. She is an iconic legendary writer who wrote prominence in the sixties and seventies writing about counterculture and more specifically California and Hollywood and some of the political challenges of the day. She's written both fiction and nonfiction. So obviously the book that I'm sharing with you today. But on the fiction side, her most known work is “Play It as It Lays”, a novel that often finds itself on the hundred greatest lists. So it does come with some pretty heavy critical acclaim, and it's one that I almost featured on the podcast. I read it some years ago at this point, but I opted for this one and I will share why momentarily.

(03:12)

I should note that there is a great documentary on Netflix called “The Center Will Not Hold”, and it was done by her nephew about her life, relationship, and work. It was really well done. So if you are interested in the author Joan Didion, then I would definitely check that out. So I mentioned that I opted for this book “The Year of Magical Thinking”. Why did I do that? Well, the other thing that I mentioned much earlier in the episode was that I thought this book would pair well with the book that I featured last week, which again was Brad Listi’s “Be Brief and Tell Them Everything”. And there was something central in that book about overcoming adversity and how to navigate uncertainty. And I think through a different lens, the book that I'm sharing with you today builds off of those thematical elements.

(04:07)

So it did win the National Book Award in 2005 when it came out. The book itself is a memoir about grief, but at the same time, I see it as a portrait of love. So following her husband's sudden death, I believe it was a heart attack or some coronary event. So he was also an author, John Gregory Dunne. And the relationship is explored actually really well in the documentary that I mentioned earlier. So she wrote this book about the year following her husband's death. In that same year, her daughter Quintana was hospitalized for pneumonia in which she went into septic shock and she was unconscious when her husband died. She ended up pulling through, but ultimately ended up passing away as well. So I think it's fair to conclude that Didion had a tough year that year, and she wrote this book about her experience. This book talks a lot more about her relationship with John Gregory Dunne and the grief associated with that because Quintana's death didn't happen until much later.

(05:21)

She wrote a subsequent book titled “Blue Nights”, in which she details her experience with that. Not to say that that isn't in this book, it's just more prominent in the latter. So now let me move into the three things that I wanted to share with you and some of the key quotes that I think help bring those ideas and thoughts along. The first being her writing, I just love it. Her subtlety and deft clarity are unmistakable in a way. In addition to this book and the novel that I mentioned earlier in the episode, I've read a bunch of her essay collections and her writing is just so consistent piece to piece, you know what you're going to get every time. And like all great writers, there is a deep-embedded honesty in the way that she sees things. An editor of mine and a friend at this point has told me that specificity leads to universality.

(06:25)

And I feel like Didion's writing is a great exemplar of that idea. She needles in on these very, very specific details, maybe their emotions or feelings. And even though you might not be experiencing that exact thing, the idea or the emotion, the feeling that the writing gives, makes the idea universal. Interestingly, like so many others, she has gone on the record of saying how much Hemingway influenced her. Even as a young girl, she supposedly would rewrite his prose so that way she could see how sentences worked and were formed. And you could see the same type of simplicity or preciseness maybe is the right word. There are so many great lines and quotes from this work and in all of Didion's books, but one that I really loved a lot is, “Life changes in an instant. The ordinary instant.” There's a simplicity to that line and a truth to that line.

(07:35)

The ordinary instant that phrasing is the mark of great writing in my opinion. It's subtle and obvious, but at the same time totally unique and unexpected. It relies on experience, felt experience both by the writer and the reader in order to drive it home. It's not forced upon you like a metaphor or dazzling word, choices that dance on the page. In a way, it is just more interactive or more inviting, hence why it's so emotional and heavy. The second thing that I wanted to bring up is this idea, the central idea of hope and positive thinking. And it's something that Didion definitely discusses in the book, having to press on in the face of adversity, in the face of grief as she writes so clearly in the book, “Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.” And she goes on to elaborate on what she means by this, but also adds somewhere along the line. “What's in the way is the way.”

(08:55)

So although grief is unimaginable and so is loss, you have to face it head-on in order to get through it. And I really love that idea and pressing on with this idea of hope that things will be better. And I myself have had sort of a topsy-turvy relationship with hope. I used to really focus on it a lot in my life and keep things ahead of me, things to look forward to, things to hope for because we all know what happens when you lose hope. It is probably the worst place to find yourself as an individual. But the interesting thing that I have come to understand about hope is that you need it, but you also can be debilitated by it and miss the things that you have in front of you today because hope places your thinking on the future, not the present moment.

(10:01)

And so my updated thinking around hope has this weird built-in tension and juxtaposition around it almost like it's great to hope, but you also have to balance that with the things that are happening right now. Because by definition, your entire life is lived through the now. And I think that that's where the positive thinking piece really comes into play. It's being positive as much as you can be because as she writes in the book, many things are true at the same time. So it's okay to have complicated feelings about the things that you're experiencing. Just because someone has passed away doesn't mean your feelings to them are any less complicated. And I think she does a great job of balancing honesty with this in the book, while still acknowledging hope and an element of positive thinking. This leads me to the final thing that I wanted to share with you about this book.

(11:08)

And in another one of her works, “The White Album”, which is an essay collection from the seventies. She has an iconic line that says, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” That line also became the title of a compilation of her first six essay collections. So you might see it under that as well. But I think this idea that stories are powerful and important for us to move on into the future and what we tell ourselves about ourselves is the thing that will most likely come true in our life. And I think that this is a really powerful idea. And when you realize that 99% of the things that we do are based on the stories that we tell ourselves, the things that make us more comfortable, that make us feel inspired, that I don't know everything, make us survive the moment. They're the stories that we form in our minds.

(12:18)

Creating positive ones and inspiring ones is a really important aspect of living a healthy life. I will conclude this with the idea that we do tell ourselves stories in order to live, and 99% of the things that we experience are a story that was created by us or by somebody else. But it is important to remember that there are things in our life that are “storyless.” This is another evolution of thought that I've kind of come to and had to realize through some of my own internal work that I've done. The storyless things in our life are physical body responses. Think about when you see someone who you're attracted to, you don't think about being attracted to that person. You have a physical response to that. There are things that are storyless that our bodies know absent from what we think. Now, this is highly speculative for a lot of people, but once you experience it, you see the power in that idea.

(13:27)

And it's not a lot of things because there's so many things that have stories baked around them, both our own and other people's. But like Didion wrote, “Many things are true at the same time.” That doesn't negate the fact that there are things that are storyless in our lives. However, we still have to be careful of the stories we tell ourselves because as Didion reminds us, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” So for the sake of time, I'm going to wrap this episode up. Obviously, I love the book. I think a lot of people will get a lot out of it. Having said that, I did want to thank you for listening to this episode, and if you stuck around till the end and enjoyed it that I want to remind you quickly, the best way to support the podcast is to subscribe on whatever platform you're listening to this on or just share it with someone who you think might like it.

(14:31)

Both of those things go a long way in helping more people find the show and inspiring more men to read. If you'd like to connect with me, you can on Instagram @douglasvigliotti. It's the only social media that I have. And lastly, as a reminder, if you'd like to listen to my 2021 poem collection, it is a mini-memoir in poetry form. It's raw, it's unorthodox, and it's titled “mini heartbreaks (or little poems about life)”. That collection is available to listen to in its entirety on the podcast, “Slightly Crooked: Good Stories, Told Well”. The link for that will be in the show notes. As always, if you want more information on this podcast, you could always visit BooksforMen.org.