Inside Joan Didion's Mind: Her Personal Diary Set For Release.

A Glimpse into the Literary Icon's Private Thoughts and Reflections is set to be released April 22nd.

When I hear the name Joan Didion, my mind immediately goes west; Didion’s insightful essays, novels, and memoirs are filled with such strong imagery that you feel as if you’re traveling alongside her. I’ll admit I haven’t read all of Didion’s work yet, but I’ve read her new journalism-esque Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and I can’t think of any book that better encapsulates the essence of the American West. Writing about the mountainous and desert landscapes and the lifestyle following these kinds of environments came easily to Didion, born in Sacramento in 1934. In her most popular novel, “Play It as It Lays,” Didion tackles the often darker side of Hollywood, which wasn’t that well known back in 1970, through the perspective of a disenchanted actress. Didion was also credited alongside Hunter S. Thompson for being a pioneer of New Journalism, a form of journalism where the writer doesn’t just merely report facts but instead immerses themselves in the story they’re covering, which Didion did exceptionally well.

As you can imagine, I was exhilarated this morning when I woke up and saw a post on I-Z magazine’s Instagram announcing that Didion's diaries will be published on April 22nd! I-Z magazine writes…"Discovered posthumously in a filing cabinet next to her writing desk, ‘Notes To John’ is said to be composed of letters Didion had written to her husband John Gregory Dunne, built around conversations she had with her psychiatrist about alcoholism, guilt, depression, adoption, and their daughter Quintana, who died in 2005.”

If you’ve read my page, you know I’ve written about the topic of authors’ diaries being published posthumously before, and it’s a topic I find both fascinating and challenging to think of. It's fascinating to see a side of our favorite authors we’ve never seen before and perhaps learn new things about them. However, it is challenging to consider whether publishing one’s most personal musings without one's permission could be invasive. In my essay “Is It Ethical To Publish Deceased Authors Personal Journals And Diaries?” I used Slyvia Plath and Edna St. Vincent Millay as the two examples of authors who never gave permission for their diaries to be published after their deaths. A fifteen-year-old Vincent Millay, in fact, left a stark warning on the front of her diary, which was later published in 2022, that she wanted nobody to ever trespass into her diary. I then wrote about the contrasting view of The Talented Mr. Ripley author Patricia Highsmith, who had arranged for her diaries to be published after her death in “Patricia Highsmith Wanted Us To Read Her Diaries.” So, as you can imagine, I’m very eager to get my hands on the forward to Didion’s diary labeled “For John” to see if Didion wanted these diaries to be published or not, something I’m hoping the publishers at Knopf will address and have taken into consideration. Didion had written some very confessional and personal pieces, particularly her The Year Of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights, where she wrote of the grief she was facing following the deaths of her husband and daughter. So maybe we could assume she would also be okay with sharing her journals with the world. But for now, I guess we'll wait till April 22nd to find out, and in the meantime, I need to catch up on my Didion Reading!