The lesson to take from her is one of wild conviction.
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What does the world want in a woman writer?
One asks for self-deprecation or one asks for its narrative twin, the confessional.
One accepts the studiousspecialistperhaps.
What one does not countenance, except in this rare case, is the authoritative woman generalist.
This is, in our time, suspect.
Each sentence is drenched in perspective; no fact could overcome the gravitational pull of her narrative voice.
And yet she stood ever bewildered at the strange wonder of the world.
Thats hard to measure.
I think its the Westerns on television.
I tend [pause] to agree.
So much of the humor derives from this slightly undermotivated malice.
Didion on Nancy Reagan: She was listening attentively.
Nancy Reagan is a very attentive listener.
(This cookie, writes Didion, is worrisome.)
Her syntax is like a steel trap, essayist John DAgata once said.
Her most technically adept work was not her most beloved.
Once, someone asked Didion why people preferred her early essays to the later.
No one likes a know-it-all, she said.
I read, bewildered, takes that position Didion as stylistically influential.
All the obits will note that she left behind a book about grief.
But every bookand nearly every sentenceis about courage.
