Agenda

Joan Didion (1934-2021) was a truly iconic American writer and intellectual. For the woman who said of herself: “I’m not very articulate,” writing was “a way of looking at the world, a way of looking but not joining.” This may be why she is oftenpigeonholed as a “New Journalist.” By investigating the complex relationship between life and words this talk aims to show that Didion immersed herself in style first and foremost to find out about, and then to “confront only obliquely,” how she felt. She wrapped herself in blanket after blanket of reportage, storytelling, comment and analysis, to explore, concealed by those narrative tapestries, how she felt. “Remember what it is to be me. That is always the point.”