The first words of Joan Didions Blue Nights are its dedication:
This book is for Quintana, typed in italics, for emphasis. I approached the reading of this thin work with the previously acquired knowledge that Quintana was the authors daughter, who died shortly after the publication of The Year of Magical Thinking, Didions memoir about the loss of her husband, the author John Gregory Dunne. I also approached this book having never read any of Didions past work. What struck me most, aside from her brazen honesty is her prose, which very nearly acted as a red herring, drawing me from the words themselves into how they are written. She is a quintessential writer, one of our most gifted essayists, alongside the now deceased Gore Vidal and Christopher Hitchens. She hammers home her points with single sentences, which are not written side by side but instead line by line. For example:
What if I fail to take care of this baby?What if this baby fails to thrive, what if this baby fails to love me? Notice the concise points. Notice the doubt. Notice the fear. Blue Nights is a memoir about not only the tragic loss of her daughter, Quintana, but also about her fears about becoming a parent and the effects of ageing upon the elderly author. I tend to actively loathe most modern authors, for no other reason than they bore me; I seldom read an interesting novel or hear of a best-seller with any merit or appraisable quality. The most recent released I enjoyed were Stieg Larssons Millennium Trilogy, which were near-perfect crime novels with heavily thrilling elements. Perhaps an author needs to be deceased in order for me to thoroughly enjoy their work? But Didion is a writer still very much alive with literary merit and talent flowing continually from every orifice, she writes with absolute honesty, with self-criticism and with the plagues of doubt shadowing what she is writing with certainty in her talent encompassing how she is writing. In the sixteenth chapter she describes her natural instinct for motherhood, beginning with her years at
Vogue as a young copywriter and later, featured editor. I feel slightly uneasy in this chapter as she described the jubilation at bleeding every month, thus giving reassurance that she was not pregnant. Eventually, along with her husband, she adopted Quintana, thus began her enduring fear of being a mother, coupled with her intense desire to be a mother. Eventually as I progressed through the pages I understood that the desire and doubt of parenthood is one which every parent feels. I understood the two things when my sister gave birth to a young boy and she revealed her fear. But as is typical, she learned what she needed to know, but again, as is the norm, she is still plagued by doubt over certain things. I get the sense that Didion is esoteric in her writing, in that Blue Nights is intended primarily for those people who have children, she is writing it as a devotion to her daughter maybe, but also as a letter to troubled mothers. This book is at its most tragic when Didion describes The Broken Man, a figure that tormented Quintana in her youthful nightmares. She tells of how in such vivid and frightening detail her daughter would describe this thing: He has on a blue work shirt, like a repair man, Short sleeves. He has his name always on his shirt. On the right-hand side. His name is David, Bill, Steve, one of those common names. I would guess this man is maybe age fifty to fifty-nine. Cap like a dodger cap, navy blue, GULF on it. Brown belt, navy-blue pants, black really shiny shoes. And he talks to me in a really deep voice: Hello, Quintana. Im going to lock you in the garage. After I became five I never dreamed about him. That dialogue is what Didions daughter would tell her, such description; like that which one would find a novel. Didion ends the chapter (9) by saying that when her daughter described his age, that was when she realised her own fear of The Broke Man to be as unquestioning as that of Quintana. When and if you read this book I suggest you do you will learn about Quintanas troubled mind, her own demons which as a devoted and loving parent, Didion took on also. This is primarily shown with the case of The Broken Man, that Didion would be as scared as her daughter of a man in a dream, a man she logically knows is not real (or do we turn to Freud on this?), that is parenthood. You share a childs fear, and then you can either be scared together or tackle the problem together. In the following chapter is the line which defines parenthood in such an honest way: After she was born I was never not afraid. Didion repeats herself a lot in this book. Fear not, that isnt old age forgetfulness and the curse of accidentally repeating oneself - that is her technique of hammering down the points she wants to communicate the most. And it works, as the sound of a man uttering the words, Hello, Quintana. Im going to lock you in the garage echoes in my mind. In the end she went against her daughters advice on death: Dont dwell on it. But as a mother, how could she not? In Blue Nights she writes about such personal things so well, and she manages a feat which not many others could pull off, she opens herself but retains her dignity. She reminds us that we are condemned to remember. And that is a curse. But it is also a gift.