Correction appended.
As part of her visit to Dartmouth, Joan Didion met Tuesday morning with professors Annelise Orleck, Colleen Boggs, Ivy Schweitzer, and Alexis Jetter and their students. Afterward, Arts Editor Lucy Randall '09 interviewed Didion for The Dartmouth. Susan Wright, executive directory of the Montgomery Endowment, joined them in Baker Berry Library's Theodore Giesel room. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation:
LR: Are you currently writing anything?
JD: Well I should be. [Taking notes]
LR: Are you always taking notes?
JD: Always, but it's difficult to start them going. There's a certain kind of personality that insists on using the notes.
LR: You would count yourself as one of those?
JD: Yes. I mean there are so many simpler ways -- there must be simpler ways -- to write a novel than to insist that every card that you lay down has to be played but that's the way I've always done it. Sometimes you make discoveries that way and sometimes you're forced to make connections. Sometimes being forced to make a connection will lead you to an interesting thing. Sometimes it's just a real waste of time.
LR: Would you say you typically start with those notes and see what themes emerge?
JD: I start with the notes.
LR: Do you know at the beginning of a project what form it's going to take?
JD: That's all you know, basically, It's based on what kind of research I'm doing -- if I'm doing interviews, I'll think in terms of a piece. If I'm thinking of making something up I'll think of fiction, obviously.
LR: Is there one form that comes to you easier?
JD: I don't feel at ease writing any of them....You enjoy it as you work it through. You don't enjoy it when you're in the throws of trying to get it started.
LR: Would this all be true for the process of writing a memoir, like "A Year of Magical Thinking?"
JD:That wasn't really a memoir. I didn't think of it as a memoir. I thought of it as a book about grief, so it worked the same way as any book -- as any piece of nonfiction. I did a certain amount of research ... You find yourself making use of almost anything that comes your way.
LR: What audience did you have in mind when you wrote it?
JD: I think I was writing it to my husband. I supposed I was writing it to our daughter too because she had been in a coma when he died, and she had no firsthand experience of his death. It was something I had told her about.
LR: What was it like to see yourself portrayed on-stage in "A Year of Magical Thinking?"
JD: I was so involved in it from the inception that it had no effect on me whatsoever. It was a piece of work. Once in a while I would catch it when it was in performance. I would be taken by surprise by it.
LR: Did the truth of the book in print get neglected at the expense of reaching more people on the stage?
JD: No, it's a very stern piece in certain ways. I think some people were unhappy that it didn't reflect more of a faith in God, for example. What surprised me when it came out was that I was hearing from a lot of much younger people than I thought I would hear from. I was traveling on promotion so I was on airplanes a lot. In airports they would stop me -- they were all young mothers with kids or, in some cases, teenagers. I totally was baffled by this. And then finally I came to realize that they were reading it as a love story. It wasn't about grief to them. It was a story about marriage.
LR: Do you think that was a misinterpretation?
JD: I don't think it was a misinterpretation, it just isn't one that I had thought of. It wasn't my impulse.
LR: When you're writing do you feel like you get to decide what is the appropriate reaction?
JD: No, I don't. If you're lucky it works on a couple of different levels.
LR: Do you think that the role of a writer such as yourself has changed in America in the past 30 years?
JD: Not really. I still think it's a writer's job to be a witness, and the changes in technology haven't changed the nature of that witness.
LR: Your essays in "The White Album" (1979) talk about student activism in the '60s. I can't even imagine that, being in college now, even though it's a major election year. How do you explain this apathy?
JD: I've seen nothing like there was then, but I attribute that to the absence of the draft ... The presence of the draft mobilized a lot of opinion that otherwise would have drifted off into "let's have another cup of coffee." And I think maybe some people have felt that way recently about the urgency of the environment.
LR: How do you think your career would take shape if you were starting out as a writer in 2008?
JD: I would do political stuff now -- it's obviously what I would do. I would make an attempt to understand more about economics.
LR: How has your writing changed since you started out?
JD: It's less showy, cleaner, less likely to go someplace exciting because I know what I'm doing, and I know how to get there. More interesting things happen when you're forced to experiment.
Susan Wright: So does that mean that your writing is more spontaneous and less exciting?
JD: Yes.
SW: More profound, maybe?
JD: More controlled.
LR: Are there any new topics you'd like to write about?
JD: Economics. I never understood economics, not that I do now. It made no sense to me.
LR: On what level?
JD: On the making-sense level.
The original version of this article, which ran on October 9, 2008, incorrectly spelled the names of professors Annelise Orleck, Colleen Boggs, Ivy Schweitzer and Alexis Jetter.
