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Joan Didion and the Art of Public Bereavement

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Joan Didion and the Art of Public Bereavement CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY SAN MARCOS THESIS SIGNATURE PAGE THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE MASTER OF ARTS IN LITERATURE AND WRITING STUDIES THESIS TITLE: “Composing Herself: Joan Didion and the Art of Public Bereavement” AUTHOR: Mikayla Keehn DATE OF SUCCESSFUL DEFENSE: April 17th, 2020 THE THESIS HAS BEEN ACCEPTED BY THE THESIS COMMITTEE IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN LITERATURE AND WRITING STUDIES. 04/17/2020 Dr. Martha Stoddard-Holmes THESIS COMMITTEE CHAIR SIGNATURE DATE 04/24/2020 Dr. Oliver Berghof THESIS COMMITTEE MEMBER SIGNATURE DATE 04/24/2020 Professor Sandra Doller Sandra Doller (Apr 24, 2020) THESIS COMMITTEE MEMBER SIGNATURE DATE 1 Composing Herself: Joan Didion and the Art of Public Bereavement Mikayla Keehn Thesis Chair: Professor Martha Stoddard-Holmes Thesis Committee: Professor Oliver Berghof Professor Sandra Doller 2 Table of Contents Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..3-15 Chapter One: Translating Grief and Mourning: Joan Didion and the Juxtaposition of the Private and Public I. Joan Didion’s Motive and the Writing Process ………………………………………………… 17-20 II. Reaching Past Grief to Translate Mourning Back into Grief………………………..……20-29 III. Comparison of The Year of Magical Thinking to Blue Nights: Universal Grieving to Inexplicable Melancholy………………………………………………………………………………….29-35 IV. Didion’s Private and Public Translation of Grief in The Year of Magical Thinking…….35-40 Chapter Two: Joan Didion’s "Vortex Effect": A Liminal Translation of Illuminated Grief, Bereavement, and Dismissal of Sentimentality. I. Liminality in Didion’s Enlightened Grief Translation— The “Vortex Effect” 40-51 II. Translating Sentimentality Amidst Mourning and Grief 51-55 III. Translating “Magical Thinking” and Finding Resolution in Grief 55-60 Epilogue: Translating My Life Alongside Joan Didion: 61-70 Works Cited 71-75 End Notes 76 3 Introduction “Imagine you’re remembering.” Joan Didion, Where I was From. I remember being in high school, twelfth grade English class, sitting across the table from elitist A.P. students destined to become the reincarnation of Ernest Hemingway, but who honestly rely on SparkNotes for their brilliant musings on the day’s reading. My hands are trickling with sweat. I am a senior in high school, and for as long as I can remember, I have had a unique fascination with books and language. I think of myself as creative— I was praised for reading the words of Anne Lamott, Linda Hogan, and Billy Collins and writing wonderful poems about cats in the sweet-smelling hay and feathers floating down from the sky. Why am I nervous in what should be the class I excel in? My teacher is nearing retirement, and it seems like every ounce of her patience had been spent twenty years prior, so every class feels reminiscent of a horror film, none of us knowing who she was going to pick out next. I had been cast as her victim before— for not having my pen and paper out even though none of my classmates had theirs out either. It wasn’t those silly but mortifying experiences that broke my spirit— it was the day when she read the first paragraph of my rhetorical analysis essay on Sylvia Plath’s poem, “The Spinster.” She held the paper in front of her face, made her scrunched forehead signal, and I knew I was doomed. “Okay-- okay. This is all wrong. Why, why, why would you use “I” in the first paragraph of an academic essay?! That is just wrong and will get you nowhere in a real college classroom,” she spat as she slammed my paper down on my desk. 4 After that comment, I sank down in my seat and the remaining part of my brain that told me I was creative and special shut off and I told myself again and again how stupid I was. Of course, nobody wants a personal anecdote before I delve into my analysis of Plath. My words merely existed for the purpose of pleasing the politics of academia and lost their poignancy once I stepped out the brass doors. When I was a new college student, entering community college, I felt apprehensive about my introductory writing class (because it’s probably not shocking that I did not take the A.P test). In the first class session, my professor encouraged us to think about how we feel in a writing classroom when an assignment is handed out. We had an open, light discussion about notions that our previous English teachers and classmates had imposed on us that discouraged our creativity. I worked up the nerve to talk about my experience the year prior, to which my teacher apologized on behalf of my former instructor and taught me that in writing an academic essay, in a real college classroom, it is important to consider our own stories in relation to the texts we are reading. From there, we can see connections in the story that relate to different rhetorical devices. Just because we are entering academic territory it does not mean that we negate our own experiences and stories in place of another writer’s. When I entered university, I started to explore genres of writing that I used to see as unattainable for my measly intellect. In the first semester of my upper division courses, I started my own creative writing project where I would blog about situations that had happened in my life-- some humorous, some not so much. It wasn't until my senior year in my upper division non-fiction creative writing course that I fully grasped what memoir was to me-- it became more than a leisurely project and more of a philosophical conundrum. I decided I wanted to see the connections 5 between my notions of the genre unraveled in philosophy and criticism. To me, a memoir is a purposefully crafted narrative where the author delves deep into their memory and interweaves their story with other forms of memory— whether it be their own or other’s. Often through extensive investigation and contemplation, the “finished” text is scrutinized for validity. What truth are we searching for, however? Are we searching for a universal sense of truth to apply to our own lives? Perhaps by imposing ourselves onto someone else’s narrative, we are in turn investing ourselves in the author’s life. Literature Review/ Critical Landscape I. Definitions of Memoir Various critics define memoir alongside terms such as “life writing,” “personal narrative,” and “autobiography” to examine the nuanced differences between each type of writing while interrogating the continually growing field of memoir writing. An important critic in the realm of autobiographical studies, Thomas Couser, in Memoir: An Introduction, clearly differentiates memoir and autobiography as well as autobiography and life writing. Life writing signifies a time in America’s early development where early settlers recorded their journeys, often with future generations in mind. Autobiography is frequently written by an individual who is approaching or near the end of their life in to preserve their story for their posterity or the public. Memoir emerges as a gateway for the ordinary person to find value and purpose to tell their story. To pinpoint various areas of memoir’s development, Ben Yagoda, in his foundational text Memoir: A History, provides a detailed log of early, foundational memoir across the globe and from there transitions into describing more contemporary memoirists and their works. Yagoda displays 6 a clear connection between memoirs and their cultural and historical contexts—further validating the essential task of detailing personal history. Yagoda also chronicles instances of some memoirs found to be fraudulent in content, where writers intentionally stretch the truth to sell more copies. He discusses how through their reception, the consequences those untruthful texts project onto the otherwise enriching genre of memoir. By defining and outlining what memoir is in practice, Yagoda provides a rich critical landscape for analyzing contemporary memoir. While some critics like Couser and Yagoda provide poignant definitions and accurate pinpoints of memoir’s developments, scholars such as James Olney depict how memoir functions within the writer’s sense of self. In Memory and Narrative, particularly in chapter five, “Memory,” Olney examines memoir through the lens of psychoanalytic criticism to discuss the unreliable nature of memory to provide absolute “truth.” Olney subverts the suspicion of memoir’s validity as a true art form and argues that its willingness to be subjective proves its necessity in literary studies. Olney alludes to memoir as a beautiful and lonely paradox, where the writer is left alone with only their memories to craft a story. His notion of the solitary writer alleviates some of the distrust common within memoir’s readership and paves the way for writers to feel empowered to tell their stories the way they feel most comfortable. II. Women’s Memoir and Criticism of Women’s Memoir To reach further into the value of reading and writing contemporary memoir in North America, Mary Karr discusses how she positions herself as a female memoirist and applies her knowledge of memoir to teaching and life practices. In The Art of Memoir, Karr discusses briefly how memoir has developed into a booming genre in literary studies but primarily develops a text of metacognition where she interweaves pieces of her own memoir with anecdotes about 7 memoir’s application in the classroom and in self-care. Karr emphasizes the importance that lies in writing about the self, particularly in the classroom where first-person writing is frowned upon as “non-academic.” Her emphasis on the self also translates into her experience in therapy, where she sees an imperative to deeply examine the self to uncover important discoveries that foster self- growth.
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