The Year of Magical Thinking About Reviews Quotes Excerpt From one of America’s iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage-and a life, in good times and bad-that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child. O'clock on the evening of December 30, 2003, my hus-THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING 7 band, John Gregory Dunne, appeared to (or did) experi­ ence, at the table where he and I had just sat down to dinner in the living room of our apartment in New York, a sudden massive coronary event that caused his death. The Year of Magical Thinking Summary From one of America’s iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage–and a life, in good times and bad–that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.

The Year of Magical Thinking (2005), by Joan Didion (b. 1934), is an account of the year following the death of the author's husband John Gregory Dunne (1932–2003). Published by Knopf in October 2005, The Year of Magical Thinking was immediately acclaimed as a classic book about mourning. It won the 2005 National Book Award for Nonfiction^[1]and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award^[2] and the Pulitzer Prize for Biography/Autobiography.^[3]

Structure and themes[edit]

The book recounts Didion's experiences of grief after Dunne's 2003 death. Days before his death, their daughter Quintana Roo Dunne Michael was hospitalized in New York with pneumonia which developed into septic shock; she was still unconscious when her father died. During 2004 Quintana was again hospitalized after she fell and hit her head disembarking from a plane in Malibu.She had returned to Malibu, her childhood home, after learning of her father's death.

The book follows Didion's reliving and reanalysis of her husband's death throughout the year following it, in addition to caring for Quintana. With each replay of the event, the focus on certain emotional and physical aspects of the experience shifts. Didion also incorporates medical and psychological research on grief and illness into the book.

The title of the book refers to magical thinking in the anthropological sense, thinking that if a person hopes for something enough or performs the right actions that an unavoidable event can be averted. Didion reports many instances of her own magical thinking, particularly the story in which she cannot give away Dunne's shoes, as he would need them when he returned.^[4] The experience of insanity or derangement that is part of grief is a major theme, about which Didion was unable to find a great deal of existing literature.^[5]

Didion applies the reportorial detachment for which she is known to her own experience of grieving; there are few expressions of raw emotion. Through observation and analysis of changes in her own behavior and abilities, she indirectly expresses the toll her grief is taking. She is haunted by questions about the medical details of her husband's death, the possibility that he sensed it in advance, and how she might have made his remaining time more meaningful. Fleeting memories of events and persistent snippets of past conversations with John take on a new significance. Her daughter's continuing health problems and hospitalizations further compound and interrupt the natural course of grief.

Writing process[edit]

Didion wrote The Year of Magical Thinking between October 4 and December 31, 2004, completing it a year and a day after Dunne died.^[6] Notes she made during Quintana's hospitalizations became part of the book.^[7] Quintana Roo Dunne Michael died of pancreatitis on August 26, 2005, before the book's publication, but Didion did not revise the manuscript.^[8] Instead she devoted a second book, Blue Nights, to her daughter's death.^[9]

Reception[edit]

In 2019, the book was ranked 40th on The Guardian's list of the 100 best books of the 21st century.^[10]

The play[edit]

On March 29, 2007, Didion's adaptation of her book for Broadway, directed by David Hare, opened with Vanessa Redgrave as the sole cast member. The play expands upon the memoir by dealing with Quintana's death. It ran for 24 weeks at the Booth Theatre in New York City and the following year Redgrave reprised her role to largely positive reviews at London's National Theatre.^[11] This production was set to tour the world, including Salzburg, Athens, Dublin Theatre Festival, Bath and Cheltenham.^[12] The play was also performed in the Sydney Theatre Company's 2008 season, starring Robyn Nevin and directed by Cate Blanchett.^[13] Also in 2008, it was performed in Barcelona at the Sala Beckett, directed by Òscar Molina and starring Marta Angelat. The play was performed in Canada at the Belfry Theatre in 2009 and at the Tarragon Theatre by Seana McKenna.^[14] This production was also mounted in January 2011 as part of English Theatre's season at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. On October 26, 2009 Redgrave reprised her performance again in a benefit production of the play at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City.^[11] In January 2010, the play was mounted at the Court Theater in Chicago, starring Mary Beth Fisher. Fisher won the 2010 'Jeff' (Joseph Jefferson equity) Solo Performance Award for her performance. The play was mounted in April 2011 by Nimbus Theater in Minneapolis, MN, starring Barbra Berlovitz and directed by Liz Neerland.^[15][16] In 2011, Fanny Ardant played a French translation of The Year of Magical Thinking in Théâtre de l'Atelier, Paris. The play opened in May 2015, at Teatro Español y Naves del Español in Madrid (Spain), produced by Teatro Guindalera. Starring Jeannine Mestre, directed by Juan Pastor Millet. The Norwegian translation of the play premiered in September 2015 at Den Nationale Scene in Bergen, directed by Jon Ketil Johnsen and starring Rhine Skaanes.^[17] On November 3, 2017, Stageworks Theatre in Tampa, Florida, opened a production of the play featuring Vickie Daignault. Writing in the Tampa Bay Times, Colette Bancroft noted Daignault's 'skill and subtlety' and the exploration of grief in Didion's play that was 'raw and refined at once.'^[18]

References and notes[edit]

1. ^'National Book Awards – 2005'. National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-02-20. (With acceptance speech.)
2. ^'All Past National Book Critics Circle Award Winners and Finalists'. National Book Critics Circle. Archived from the original on 2007-02-20. Retrieved 2007-04-26.
3. ^'The Pulitzer Prizes'. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2007-05-31.
4. ^Feeney, Mark (2005-10-26). 'Amid unbearable sorrow, she shows her might'. The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2008-06-09.
5. ^Van Meter, Jonathan (2005-10-02). 'When Everything Changes'. New York Books. Retrieved 2008-06-09.
6. ^O'Hagan, Sean (2006-08-20). 'The years of writing magically'. The Guardian. London. Retrieved 2008-06-09.
7. ^Brockes, Emma (2005-12-16). 'Q: How were you able to keep writing after the death of your husband? A: There was nothing else to do. I had to write my way out of it'. The Guardian. London. Retrieved 2008-06-09.
8. ^McKinley, Jesse (2005-08-29). 'Joan Didion's New Book Faces Tragedy'. The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-06-09.
9. ^Joan Didion Mourns Her Daughter's Death. New York Times, 2011-11-06, page found 2012-01-27.
10. ^'The 100 best books of the 21st century'. The Guardian. Retrieved 22 September 2019.
11. ^ ^ab'Redgrave to Recount The Year of Magical Thinking at St. John the Divine Oct. 26'. playbill.com. Retrieved 2016-08-16.
12. ^Robertson, Campbell (2006-05-26). 'Vanessa Redgrave and Joan Didion, Working on a Merger'. The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-04-26.
13. ^Hallett, Bryce (2007-09-08). 'Theatre's dream team keeps Nevin in the act'. The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 2007-09-16.
14. ^https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pQhCi85Oew Video excerpt of Tarragon Theatre production of The Year of Magical Thinking
15. ^http://www.nimbustheatre.com/discover/production.php?productionID=34^{[permanent dead link]} Show description at http://www.nimbustheatre.com - Retrieved 2011-05-04
16. ^Royce, Graydon (2011-05-02). 'A writer sifts the details of loss'. Minneapolis Star Tribune. Archived from the original on 2012-10-16. Retrieved 2011-05-04.
17. ^'DE MAGISKE TANKERS ÅR'. Den Nationale Scene. Retrieved 12 March 2016.
18. ^http://www.tampabay.com/things-to-do/stage/Review-The-Year-of-Magical-Thinking-at-Stageworks_162379752

External links[edit]

• Audio interview with Joan Didion by Kurt Anderson (2005). Studio 360. March 2, 2007.

A week ago, I darted up the stairs to my room, in a rush to enclose myself in my space and my mind, away from the world that was my dad shouting incoherently at Chris Wallace through the barrier of the television. I had gone to the library curbside pickup earlier that day, and I now cracked open The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. I was depressed. We were—are—all depressed. It seemed somehow fitting that I should read a book by a grieving author while I was grieving the loss of my country as well as any normalcy I might have experienced in the early months of 2020.

Didion describes the sudden loss of her husband, her grieving process, and how thereafter she struggled to perform actions like giving away his shoes, for if she did, this would not “allow” him to return as he would need his shoes at home. This latter idea is known as “magical thinking”—our way of trying to escape the inevitable or the truth through supposedly causal behaviors, thoughts, or rituals.

I have found myself engaging in a lot of magical thinking this year. This year, this sacrilegiously awful year of COVID. This year of songbirds falling, dead, out of the Western skies in beautifully sad attempts to escape an unregistered climate emergency. This year of Trump, of me at home when I should be at university, of America, here, now.

Nights like these are respites for me. I have not yet fallen ill with the novel coronavirus that I know of, so I lie on my bed beneath fairy lights, completing my pre-med coursework and preparing for the next day’s Zoom sessions. I am not sick and the world is dark, so the pandemic is not happening. Likewise, a few weeks ago when night finally fell on my Chicago skies, which at day were white and filled with PM 2.5 particles from California ash, the wildfires had ceased to ever be. If night falls in my time zone, I attribute a calming effect to it, believing that the night I experience causes everything else which is bad to cease, and moreover, to never have taken place.

The Year Of Magical Thinking Summary

95 blood oxygen level. When I sealed myself off from the presidential debate a week or so ago, I made the debate stop for a while. My own behaviors exhibited causality with the external world. I holed up in my suburban home and Trump stopped interrupting Biden, Chris Wallace vanished into thin air, and Biden became my president, ending the so-called “shitshow.” And the climate emergency was resolved in one fell swoop.

Yet I am not the only American to be magically thinking this year. We are most of us numb and saddened by what has occurred, and so many of us have turned into machines revolving around our day-to-day rituals and numbers. The American thinks to herself, if I recycle and compost as much as I can today and for as long as I can, then I will save the environment and things will be okay and maybe, just maybe, it will be okay for me to have children. Or else the American counts her 10,000 steps a day inside while quarantining, because as long as I get my steps in every day and maybe also take an Alive! Multivitamin I won’t get Covid and become one of those long haulers. You can’t help but notice the fabulous uptick in walkers and joggers in your neighborhood during the past six months. Is it because we’re all stuck at home and we’ve decided to get fit! or is it because we’re all just counting our numbers and ritualizing our actions because we attribute grandiose causality to them like a basket of religious zealots? You tell me.

Yet where does the line between magical thinking and real causality get placed in this time of turbulence? The link between sharing political postings on Facebook or Instagram and actually influencing a follower’s political post is weak at best, but we’re all doing it anyway, sharing away like a pack of fiends and urging each other to VOTE. We’re putting up signs in our lawns and text banking for Joe even though this, too, is unlikely to change anyone’s mind at this point and sometimes you get responses from Trump supporters such as the ever-eloquent “Eat my a**.” We all know in our heart of hearts that if we don’t post that post specifically that one, or text 100 more registered voters, then we will single-handedly lose the election for Biden.

No American wants to be the person who could’ve done more but didn’t. For Biden, about COVID, about climate change, about everything. If it helps me, if it helps us as patriotic Americans and world citizens, to try to help the world or try to help get Biden in the White House if we think magically, then so be it. Let the magical thinking continue.

My Year Of Magical Thinking Joan Didion

Let it unfurl and proliferate in the mind of every American.