the year of magical thinking
first edition, 2005.
from the new york times:
"in december 2003, the only daughter of didion and her husband, the writer john gregory dunne, fell into septic shock from a runaway pneumonia infection. her doctors at new york's beth israel north put the young woman -- she was married only five months earlier -- into an induced coma. on the evening of dec. 30, her parents returned from the hospital to their apartment. While the couple were talking over supper, john gregory dunne slumped in his chair with one hand raised, dying so suddenly that for a moment his wife mistook the event for a failed joke."
"didion tells her story largely by tracing a kind of dance between two kinds of deceptive language: on one side, there is the half-secret, personal language of "magical thinking" that creates needs, interdictions, omens: i need to be in the one city where the dead person would return, if he came back; i cannot give away certain of that person's shoes; the dead sea gull and the typo and the undeleted e-mail message are signs. that internal voice, 'magical thinking' denying its own desperation, whispers that the funeral ritual will restore what is lost. it says that reading the obituary would be a betrayal...on the other side, equally evasive, more subtly irrational, there are the voices of society. when a friend tells us about a terrible diagnosis, we may need to respond with an anecdote about someone we know whose brother-in-law survived just that illness with no problem, or we need to tell about an herbal tea that produces miraculous cures. telling those in grief that they are 'bearing it very well' or 'being strong' can be not only presumptuous, but coercive: the voice of conventionality saying it does not want to be disturbed. these stoical platitudes represent a communal, anonymous kind of magical thinking or denial of reality. with her perfect-pitch ear for plausible humbug, words used to dismiss or look away from a reality, didion notes a social worker on the night of the death telling the doctor: 'she's a pretty cool customer.' she reflects: 'i wondered what an uncool customer would be allowed to do. break down? require sedation? scream?'"
new york: alfred a knopf. isbn: 140004314x. jacket condition: extremely minor shelf wear to spine. very good+. book condition: unclipped ($23.95). very good++. Item #306
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